No Dogs or Anglophones

French versus Englisn Volume 47

2012-02-10T00:00:00.000-05:00

Danon Yogurt Tells Anglos & Ethnics not to bother applying for Job

Doesn't matter if you speak French perfectly, if it isn't your mother tongue, don't bother applying for this job posted by Danon.
See it here Job Offer

It is the very first time I've ever seen a job offered with French as a mother tongue being a requirement.

This from the online ad;

LANGUES:
Français: Langue maternelle
Anglais: Courant

Methinks that the employment agency that prepared the ad screwed up. I don't think it is legal to include 'Mother Tongue' in a job description.
That type of discrimination is usually exercised during the interview...Ahem..
(Thanks to Phil for the story)

Ex-anglo rights activisit joins CAQ

Nobody can question the dedication to Anglo rights of one William 'Pit' Bill Johnson, who has militated tirelessly on behalf of English rights in Quebec for decades. The ex-president of Alliance Quebec has written eloquently over the years, staunchly defending an alternate and inclusive view of Quebec society.

So it is signifigant that he has embraced Francois Legault's CAQ, a strong signal to the English community that it is okay to support the party and that fears of a latent separatist bent is unfounded.

While the Premier howls that the CAQ is a closet separatist party, the PQ is now adopting the line that the party is federalist.

By embracing Johnson, a strong federalist with an anti-Bill 101 pedigree, Legault, in one fell swoop, has displayed by his actions that his 'Rainbow coalition' really will set aside the sovereignty question to concentrate on fixing the economy and the failed 'Quebec Model'
Read Mr. Johnson's explanation on why he joined the CAQ Montreal Gazette Alternate Link

Speaking of Francois Legault, Here is a video posted on Youtube, of the leader of the CAQ struggling mightily in English.
It's a bit mean-spirited....so obviously I couldn't resist posting it!

As for speaking English, listen to this sound bite, where the importance of speaking English is underlined.

Guess who said it?

Quebec getting poorer- Quebec Prof

"A study from l'Université de Montréal's business school HEC Montréal has concluded that the income gap is widening between Quebec and wealthier parts of Canada – and that Quebec could be the poorest province in the country within a decade.

The research conducted by HEC's Centre for Productivity and Prosperity found that between 1978 and 2009 the net average household income gains in all other provinces outstripped Quebec's gains.

In 2009, the last year the study looked at, the average resident of Newfoundland and Labrador – traditionally Canada's poorest province – earned just $3,127 less than the average Quebecer, while an Albertan averaged $17,947 more than someone living in Quebec. Read the rest of the story

The fact that the study was prepared by a Quebecer of impeccable credentials augers poorly for the spin artists. I'm anxiously awaiting the explanations which will invariably blame you-know-who.
C'mon, Jean-François Lisée, you're up!

Here is a really good article in the National Post which says much about the economic problems of Quebec and eerily resembles much of what I wrote in my last post. I'm glad the story came out after mine, otherwise I might be accused of plagiarism! Link

Pierre Curzi - Nuttier than a fruit cake

In a piece that smacks of childish wishful thinking, Quebec's resident fantasist Pierre Curzi has pontificated on how Quebec can wrest more power from Ottawa.
Read it and weep over the fact that idiots like him can actually one day exercise power over us.

"There are two ways for the people of Quebec to obtain additional powers of the federal government. The first is to undertake the drafting of a Quebec constitution, irregardless whether it is a provincial constitution or constitution of a country. At the end of the drafting process which would define Quebec values (French language, equality of men and women, secular state, etc..), democratic institutions and the powers necessary for the emancipation of Quebec, the new constitution would be ratified democratically by the Quebec nation and presented to English Canada. Canada would then be required to bargain in good faith with Quebec's constitutional powers enshrined in the first constitution of Québec.
The second way to get more federal powers would be to make several constitutional demands and to hold a referendum to determine which baskets of requests should be submitted as part of the negotiations with Canada.
In this case, the caquistes could ask Quebecers if they want to repatriate their taxes or treaties like Kyoto. They could also provide citizens of Quebec the opportunity to decide on the possibility of repatriating cultural sovereignty, justice, the maritime territory, the environment, unemployment insurance or old age pensions. Link{Fr}

Is it that hard to see the essential flaw in Mr. Curzi's argument?
Why on Earth would Ottawa negotiate any of this?

Quebec civil service sending nasty political messages

It seems that the civil service is now in the political message department, posting this rather nasty note to those recently arrived immigrants wishing to obtain information about obtaining a Health card, in English.

I find the whole thing nasty and objectionable and take particular exception to the part that says you can only participate in Quebec civic and social life in French. T'ain't so.

(Thanks to Frank for the story.)

Pauline Marois - Let the rich pay!

Pauline, Do the Math!

In an absurd piece of pandering, Pauline Marois promised to abolish the proposed Health Tax imposed by the Liberal government.
According to Madame Marois her measure will eventually return $950 million to taxpayers who will be able to inject the money directly into the economy.
To pay for the revenue shortfall, she intends on taxing the rich.

She told reporters at a news conference that a PQ government would raise the tax rate on those making over $130,000 a year by 4% and by 7% on those making over $250,000 and by reducing certain tax credits such as certain capital gains and credits on dividends. Read the story in French

But this is the same separatist math used by idiots like Mario Beaulieu intended to mislead and mesmerize.
You see readers, raising taxes on the rich by 4% or by 7% as she said, may not seem like such a big deal, but it is when it is not really a 4% or 7% rise.

Madame Marois proposes increasing the tax rate on those earning between $130,000 to $250,000 from 24% to 28%, which in her book is a 4% increase and in mine (and anyone who can do math) a 16.6% increase. As for those who make over $250,000 Madame proposed that the tax rate be raised from 24% to 31%, a whopping tax increase of 29% instead of the 7% mentioned.

It means that someone making $130,000 will face a $5,200 extra tax bill and someone making $250,000 will face a $17,500 increase.

The rich already pay quite a bit.
The top 1.5% richest Quebecers pay 33% of the total tax collected and the top 20% pay 70% of all taxes.

In Quebec 40% of ~~taxpayers~~ of those filing a tax return pay nothing.

When asked by a reporter if the new measures would create an exodus of rich people out of Quebec, Madame Marois said that Quebec is still a better place to live than Alberta, because houses and education cost less. ARgghhh!!! Link{Fr}

But hey, it makes good Press.
Think any of the mainstream media will do the math?

Daycare Strikers push greedy demands

As I told you on Wednesday, Quebec's unionized daycare workers are using a series of one-day strikes to terrorize parents into pressuring the government to give into their demands.
What are these demands?

The glorified babysitters, making between $14.43 to $21.65 are demanding an 11% raise over three years .
In addition, they want between 11 and 13 paid holidays while the rest of we mere mortals must content ourselves to eight, so we can expect workers to be paid double time if they work on holidays like Valentine's Day or Remembrance Day.

The workers are also demanding 8-10 personal days and six weeks vacation.

There....did I make your day?
Those of you with university degrees making a lot less, you should have majored in Play-Doh!

By the way, in my article on Wednesday, I mentioned that the government subsidies each day care to the tune of $38 per child, per day. An article in La Presse indicates that the subsidy is higher, up to $58 a day. Link{Fr}

Amir Khadir-Too many English daycares

"Unless it is considered “indispensable,” the ability to speak English should not be a criterion for getting a job in this province, Québec solidaire president Françoise David told reporters on Saturday.

“We feel there are probably a lot of jobs where it’s not necessary to speak English,” said David, adding that the awarding of daycare centre permits be conditional to an assurance that “the predominant language in the education of young children be French."

“In Montreal at the moment we have plenty of family run daycares where French is not the predominant language,” she said. “And eventually we end up with children entering kindergarten who cannot speak French, which places them at a disadvantage to other children.” Read the rest of the story in the Montreal Gazette Alternate Link

'Smoke meat' versus 'Viande Fumé.'

As you've all probably heard by now, Schwartz's, Montreal's iconic smoked meat restaurant is on the verge of being sold to a group that includes ~~Céline~~ Celine Dion's hubby/manager, René Angelil for a whopping 10 million.
For that price, it's obvious that the buyers are purchasing the brand, rather than just the restaurant and I guess it won't be long before we see restaurants popping up in Chicoutimi and Quebec City.
As the restaurant climbs out of the kitsch and into the mainstream, it will face the inevitable language issues of Quebec.
First order of business will be to francize the name of business and get rid of that nasty apostrophe 'S'

Schwartz's = Chez Schwartz

Surely the OQLF will also be looking seriously at the issue of the restaurant's improper use of French in describing its plat-de-resistance as 'Smoke Meat' (which Francophone Montrealers have used for decades)
But perhaps a case can be made, considering that the French slang 'Smoke Meat' is different front the English 'Smoked Meat,' so perhaps the OQLF will allow the words to pass into the modern French lexicon.
Another issue is the translation of other favorites, like 'Karnatzel." In order to make the reference kosher for the OQLF (pun intended,) the restaurant will likely be obliged to add a French modifier to the Yiddish description, hence 'Saucisse Karnatzel.'

As for the 'Nash' well, they'll have to work on a translation for that! (perhaps Grignote 'Nash')

The debate rages on as to whether Schwartz's is the best or not.

It is.....hands down.

All the other Montreal wannabes are good, but they don't quite get the spices and the texture perfect and that includes my favorite, Smoked Meat Pete's out in 'Île-Perrot, which I sometimes patronize because I'm out there on business often and Schwartz's is just to damn busy, crammed with tourists.

Don't go to Schwartz's if you're one of those people that orders dressing on the side, it is a guilty experience of decadence, akin to dining at Lafleurs or ripping into a box of Krispy Kreme donuts.

Don't order your sandwich 'lean' or you'll be taken for a Rube by the surely waiters. Schwartz's smoked meat is drier than the norm and needs the fat to complete the taste experience.

How to order. 'Sandwich - Fries - Pickles- Black Cherry.' That is the Schwartz's experience. Never forget the Cott's Black Cherry soda, it has been de rigueur for as long as I can remember.

Think I'm wrong about Schwartz's being the best in North America?

Read this account by an expert who has visited all the great North American delis and places Schwartz's head and shoulders above the rest. You can also watch famed jurist Alan Dershowitz biting into his first Schwartz's sandwich. Great reading!

My favorite Schwartz's story;
One night after a hockey game at the old Montreal Forum we headed out to Schwartz's and as we were just about finished eating, four Calgary Flames (whom I will not name) were seated at our table (which are communal.)
Clearly out of their depth, they asked for the waiters recommendations and then ordered...gasp!... two glasses of milk and a side of mayonnaise for the sandwiches.
The waiter flinched, but after rolling his eyes, walked away and proceeded to loudly announce sarcastically to the entire restaurant that the hockey players wanted 'milk and mayonnaise.'
My eating partner was beside himself and could hold back no longer. Turning to the players he told them loudly that;
"If you put mayonnaise on your sandwich, I'll throw up all over you!" HaHa!

By the way, one of my favorite things at Schwartz's is the dry steak spice which they sell for a couple of bucks behind the counter and is well worth it.
Bring it home and use it on your steaks at your next BBQ and you'll be in for a treat.
Positively the finest, probably because they include coriander seed in the mix (the same spice as in the smoked meat.) Sprinkle a little on your meat (one side only) and grill.
Add a little more at the table on the finished product. Simply the best. The real taste of Montreal.

May the Schwartz be With You.

Mea Culpa

Last week I had a bit of fun with a fellow who wrapped his new electronic electric meter from Hydro-Quebec with aluminum foil in order to block those 'harmful' rays.

I stated that I didn't know if these emanations caused any harm or not and I received quite a scolding, deservedly so, in several emails.
I should have checked my facts before saying something so stupid.

The so-called rays involved are in fact completely harmless.

"According to McGill Science and Society Director Joe Schwarcz, radio frequency studies are conclusive: the meters will not have negative health effects.

"We know that radio frequency cannot break chemical bonds and in order to induce cancer you need to break chemical bonds," said Schwarcz.

Poisson cited another concern, her feeling that Hydro-Quebec was ignoring her right to choose.

"I don't have a cell phone, I've never had one. As for WiFi, I will be switching back to cables because I have the choice," said Poisson. "With smart meters, you don't have the choice."
LINK

Case closed......

Minister hits back at complainers

OTTAWA - The federal government is brushing off criticism of its plan to spend $7.5 million to celebrate the Queen's 60th anniversary on the throne.

There has been some grumbling from anti-monarchists, notably in Quebec, that the Diamond Jubilee would cost so much money at a time of deep budget cuts.

But Heritage Minister James Moore had an answer for those critics Tuesday.

He said the federal government had spent way more on other celebrations, and referred specifically to the 400th anniversary of Quebec City in 2008.

''These sums have always existed within the department for these kinds of events. Look, $100 million was spent on Quebec City's 400th anniversary,'' Moore told The Canadian Press. LINK

Touché, or as we say in English, Shaddup awready!

From Scotland, lessons on separatism
Here's an interesting article on a possible Scottish referendum written by Andrew Coyne for The National Post;

"Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?

That is the question Scotland’s separatist First Minister, Alex Salmond, proposes to put to Scottish voters in a referendum sometime in late 2014. Ten words, no subordinate clauses, its meaning incapable of confusion. Compare it with this little essay in obscurity:

Do you agree that Quebec should become sovereign after having made a formal offer to Canada for a new economic and political partnership within the scope of the bill respecting the future of Quebec and of the agreement signed on June 12, 1995?" Read the rest of the article

Please have yourself a very nice weekend!

Quebec Students- A Study in Entitlement

2012-02-08T00:00:00.000-05:00

We want an education Not debt

Every time I hear Quebec students leaders threaten a strike over tuition fees, I grind my teeth and remind myself that this is exactly what is wrong with Quebec.

You'd never know it from listening to the incessant and annoying braying that Quebec students remain the most pampered in North America, with the lowest tuition fees and among the lowest entry standards for access to post-secondary education.

The average annual Quebec university tuition fee is $2,168, while the average in the ROC(Quebec excluded) is $5,445. In the United States that fee is over $10,000.

In other words, Quebecers pay less than 40% of what other Canadians pay for a university education and about 20% of what Americans pay.

The students are mighty angry over the fact that the Quebec government plans to boost annual tuition fees by $325 per year for five years, raising the fees to $3,793 by 2017.
Even with all the increases, Quebec will remain the biggest educational bargain in North America. (Yes that includes Mexico!)

Incidentally, Quebec students graduate with the lowest level of student debt in Canada with the Quebec average at $13,000, compared with a Canadian average of $27,000.

According to Quebec students, it's still too much.

But Quebec students aren't any more guilty of greed and avarice than other Quebecers who have been conditioned to believe that there is no connection between taxes and the benefits doled out by the government, or to put it more simply, the idea that when the government gives a benefit to one, somebody else has to pay for it.

And so the lower tution fees are underwritten by taxi drivers in Montreal, government employees in Quebec City, construction and office workers in Sherbrooke, in other words, everyone else who works, pays taxes and has part of his or her wealth confiscated to pay for the shortfall between what students pay for their education and what it actually costs.

In addition to all this, Quebec students benefit from the fact that workers in Kelona, British Columbia, Calgary, Alberta and even Owen Sound, Ontario, also contribute to their reduced tuition fees, by way of equalization payments that the province receives from Ottawa.

When students whine about wanting to pay less for their education, they are in reality asking taxpayers across the country to contribute more of their hard-earned cash to subsidize them.
Because Quebec runs a deficit and carries a high debt load, students are also demanding that future generations pay for their education as well.

And while Quebec students have no problem hitting up taxpayers and future generations for a tuition subsidy, one group seems to be off limits.... their own parents.
Over 65% of parents of Quebec students, contribute absolutely nothing (other than taxes) to their child's education (this according to the student's union.)
When it comes to contributing to a Registered Education Savings Plan, Quebec families put aside about half as much money as compared to British Columbian families.

There was a time when students marched against war, for human rights and for the enviornment.
Today the only issue that can motivate students to demonstrate, is the issue of tuition fees.
It is in fact the only issue they are passionate about.

Look at the effort they made in preparing a document arguing for reduced tuition fees, it's a masterpiece of deceptive and selective statistics that would make Pierre Curzi proud. Read it here

The students are not unique, they are but an illustrative example of what Quebecers and their society have become.
On Monday, ~~babysitters~~ educators (making over $20 an hour,) working in provincially-funded daycares, called a one-day strike that wrecked havoc on working parents, causing many to lose a day's work.

ENTITLEMENTS BREED GREED.

Now I don't want to make this an English/French thing, Quebecers are united in sucking at the teat of the gouvernemama. (the mommy state.)
We are all guilty of stuffing our faces with government goodies when we can, but in our defence, if the government is giving out benefits and entitlements, who of us is noble enough to say 'no thank you.'

First let us establish that these handouts are not free.
Because entitlement programs are run by the government, they are expensive and cumbersome.

Let me cite but one example- publicly funded daycare.

If any one program illustrates the mommy state and it's related cost to society, it is the $7 a day subsidized daycare program.
When first introduced in 1997, the program cost $290 million. Thirteen years later, the program has mushroomed to over $2 billion dollars, a seven-fold increase.

While parents pay just $7 a day directly to the daycare centre for each child in attendence, taxpayers contribute, wait for it.....$38.

So consider, publicly funded daycare costs taxpayers about $200 dollars per child, per week. If parents have two children in daycare, well... you do the math.

This $200 weekly subsidy per child in daycare is UNIVERSAL. That's right, everyone is eligible, even those earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year!
The only bugbear is that the government has restricted access because of the staggering cost of the program.
Snagging one of those rare places in daycare is a question of who you know or how much you are willing to pay under-the table, so a wealthy lawyer has more of a chance to get his or her child into a publicly funded daycare, than a barista working at Tim Hortons.

Does this program make any sense at all?......To Pierre Curzi and friends, it does..
It is the famous Quebec Model.

Subsidized Daycare - Extended Paid Parental leave - low tuition fees - subsidized prescription medicine - extended pregnancy leave- convoluted pay equity programs are all part of Quebec's unique model that has the government paying for generous programs that no other provincial or state government seems to be able to afford.

But has it made Quebec a better place to live?

While proponents of the Quebec model, like Pierre Curzi, rave about the merits of the mommy state, the facts tell another story.

Because Quebec shares the same federal government as the other provinces, it is not that difficult to compare Quebec society to that of provinces which provide less services and subsidies.

For every seventeen entrepreneurs in Alberta or British Columbia there are only seven in Quebec. Link

While the country averages 70 businesses per 100,000 population, Quebec has around 60.

Quebecers are also about 20% less productive than other Canadians, that is producing less wealth, probably because they work less hours and retire earlier.

Quebecers remain the highest taxed citizens in North America, yet earn much less than the average Canadian family
According to Statistics Canada, a two-parent/two children family in Quebec, earns on average about $68,000 a year, while the Canadian average is $93,000.

More than one third of Quebecers (aged 55-65) have put aside less than $99,000 for their retirement, counting on the government to support them in their old age with a meager pension that now pays around ten thousand dollars per person.
The "Rule of 20" states that for every $1 of retirement income, you will need $20 saved in your retirement portfolio. With less than 100k saved, these retirees will receive less than 5,000 a year in income aside from the government pension. Not too comforting.
Only 7% of Quebecers in this age bracket have saved over $500,000 towards their retirement.

This is the effect of the cradle to grave subsidies.

As citizens become accustomed to government largess they become lazier and poorer and like our students, badly addicted to their entitlements.

On top of all this, the Quebec entitlements have been partly paid for with debt and equalization payments from Ottawa.

When that runs out, Quebecers, used to living on the arm of the government will be in for a rude awakening...just like the Greeks.

Quebec's latest Crisis Nothing to do with Language

2012-02-06T00:00:00.000-05:00

The alarming uptick in the unemployment rate in Quebec during StatsCan latest reporting period should have set off a panic within the government and should very much be the issue of the day.

Somehow few seem panicked, least of all, the government.

While the rest of Canada saw the unemployment rate dip marginally, the loss of jobs over the last six months pushed the Quebec rate up a staggering 2 percent to 8.7%.
This while the country is supposed to be in recovery.

In fact, during this period Quebec lost a staggering 50,000 jobs while the rest of the country added 250,000!

In hindsight, the closure of the Shell refinery in east end Montreal a year ago, heralded the beginning of an unprecedented spate of closures, lockouts and shutdowns that has decimated Quebec's manufacturing base and which continues unabated.

The closure of the Shell refinery was brought on by union excess that saw the plant suffer from pitifully low productivity, coupled with overly generous salaries and conditions.
Sadly, unlike other companies which cannot compete paying high 'Quebec' salaries, the refinery would have remained functional had the union acted more responsibly.

But that being said, the handwriting is on the wall for Quebec's manufacturing base. Salaries and operating costs in Quebec are just too expensive compared to the Orient, Latin America and believe it or not, even the United States.

The Electrolux vacuum cleaner manufacturing plant is off to Tennessee where workers will make about ten dollars an hour less than in Quebec and where the costs related to employee benefits are considerably lower.

Last week MABE, a plant producing dryers announced that it too is moving its 700 jobs to either Mexico or the United States, the union pushing the fiction that it is America's 'Buy American' plan that made their product unattractive, rather than the real reason, the higher manufacturing costs associated with Quebec.

These latest closures continue the decline that started back in the seventies with the move overseas of Quebec's robust sewing industry. Back then, seamstresses were pulling in a healthy hourly rate of $15 an hour, which is probably equivalent to $30-$40 an hour today.

All this is coupled with Big Pharma scaling back research, after years of growth in Quebec. Last week AstraZeneca announced that it will eliminate 175 jobs and with recent layoffs at Johnson & Johnson, Merck and others, it means that another 1000, more than decent jobs, are out the window.

And so these well-paid workers, now jobless, are left to the dole, forced to exit the province or obliged to scrounge around with nothing but McJobs available.

Is this the future?
Is Quebec on the road to becoming a Detroit, having lost it's competitive edge and relevancy?
I hope not.

Sadly, Quebecers remain mostly ambivalent to these economic body blows and somehow, it doesn't seem to matter, or in fact, even register with those who seem more interested in debating an accent on the sign of the METRO supermarket chain.

The province has got to find a way to maintain decent paying jobs, otherwise we will see that as the unemployment rate rises, coupled with a drop in remuneration for the remaining jobs, a catastrophic loss in government revenues, impacting the province's ability to support its bloated social programs.

I don't want to sound like an alarmist, but if things don't change, we are headed for a meltdown.

The equalization program that brings Quebec about eight billion dollars a year is up for re-negotiation in two years and like it or not, Stephen Harper will be sitting on the other side of the table. If that program gets modified to the detriment of Quebec, it will be an unmitigated disaster.
With the province approaching it's debt ceiling rather quickly, anyone who can do math, can see an impending economic and social disaster unfolding.

One way or the other, Quebec needs new revenue streams, probably in the neighborhood of ten billion dollars, otherwise we can all start learning Greek.

The question remains - How to create wealth?

While Quebecers continue to demand the good life, they fail miserably to understand that wealth creation is the key to prosperity.

Let us shunt aside union extremism, poor productivity and the nanny government, realities that unfortunately aren't' going to change soon or ever.
Is there anything to be done?

Premier Charest has proposed just about the only thing that can save Quebec from itself, called LE PLAN NORD, an aggressive program to tap into the province's vast natural resources.

It is probably Quebec's last path towards salvation, but you wouldn't know it by the lukewarm reception it has gotten in the Press.

Jobs in the resource field are golden, a virtual gold mine, if you'll pardon the pun.

Quebec enjoys vast caches of gold, nickel, cobalt, platinum, iron and ilmenite and yes, even oil and gas, all waiting to be lifted from the ground.

Up in the Abitibi region, Quebec's largest mining region, jobs in the eight currently operating mines pay up to $70 an hour, with the company making plenty of money to boot.

The jobs are so enticing, that 70% of the classes of area colleges are filled with females, the men long gone into the mines!

Quebec's vast territory provides a wealth of natural resources, ripe for development, but the biggest obstacle is Quebecers themselves, who have no sense of urgency over the matter.

A powerful environmental and native lobby have partnered with radical nationalists to stall these plans.

The government, in the face of opposition has already put a halt to fractional gas drilling, with no plan or timetable to safely pursue this valuable resource.

The border dispute between Quebec and Newfoundland over the 'Old Harry' oil field in the Gulf of St. Lawrence seems to have been settled, but nothing concrete has been undertaken to get production underway.
More studies and wasted decades.

It has been proposed that the largely uninhabited Anticosti island holds 30 billion barrels of oil (3 trillion dollars at today's current price of crude) yet again nothing seems to be done to develop these resources very quickly.

There are currently 35 mining projects in various stages of planning, a number that exceeds Quebec's 25 currently operating mines.

The wealth that these projects could bring is staggering, yet all we hear in the Press is the demand for more studies and delays.
It seems that every single project is subject to five, ten or fifteen year delays.

Nobody seems to care, the initiative to create wealth, relatively unimportant.

Why? Because Quebecers have been used to getting something for nothing.

Vast borrowing and equalization payments have insulated us from believing that we must produce wealth in order to support our lifestyle.
After just two or three generations of being a something-for-nothing society, Quebec has become the proverbial welfare family, permanently on the dole with no industrious desire as long as money is for free.

With so much potential, the province remains lazy, uninterested and disconnected.

The most important question is not whether will we change, but rather whether we can change.

French versus English Volume 46

2012-02-03T00:00:00.000-05:00

Star Académie -Too much English

"The popular reality-talent show was steaming along, with all the right heartstrings being pulled, and then the candidates starting singing, with many of them doing it in the language of Shakespeare...

Actually, out of the eight songs sung by the 'contestants in danger' (contestants who were vying for a spot on the opening roster of the show), four were in English and one was bilingual.

Later on in the show - after a soaring tribute to Gilles Vigneault - René Angélil, Céline Dion's manager/husband and the director of the Académie, picked up on the trend.

"They can sing in English if they want, but if they want to make it until the end, we think, from prior experience, it's not the best option to sing in English. ... I think we should hear more French here," Angélil said. Read the rest of the article Alternate Link

Read the story en Française

I must take exception to Celine Dion's hubby/manager, René Angélil who advised candidates to do as he says, not as he does.

It was Mr. Angélil who transformed Céline Dion from a local francophone singer with a unibrow, into an Anglophone artist who captured the world singing IN ENGLISH, doing her best imitation of an Anglophone.
It was Mr. Angélil who advised Céline to remove the accent from her name in order to become CEE-leen from SAY-lin.
Talk about two-faced.....

Then there is the Pierre-Karl Peledaeau's better half, Julie Snyder who I can't stand because she scores her gigs the old-fashioned way, via nepotism.
She couldn't resist throwing a zinger at Quebec Anglophones, by intimating that they cannot speak, a gratuitous lie.

“Congratulating one Ontario-born contestant on the live show for speaking French well, showbiz veteran Snyder added, with mock incredulity:
“How can that be? Us, we have Anglophones in Montreal who don’t speak a word of French, and they were raised in Quebec! They were born here!”

Read more: Montreal Gazette Alternate Link

By the way, STAR ACADEMIE is modeled after a television show from France which is named rather ironically STAR ACADEMY (note the spelling)

Is this What Language Militants Want?

Flipping channels, I came across this, the logo for the locally produced French version of TPIR.
It's interesting because it's got that famous 'descriptor' that the OQLF demands, so it's 100% Kosher, but.....
Does it really help?

Huntington mayor continues to run hot?

Stéphane Gendron, the mayor of Huntington and host of a morning television newsmagazine, is not averse to ruffling feathers.
He went a bit too far when he ranted that Israel didn't have the right to exist and the fallout that ensued was so intense, that even he had to come off his high horse and apologize
You can view the apology here LINK{Fr}

Readers will recall that the good mayor publicly announced that his town would remain bilingual, even if it didn't qualify under the strict interpretation of Bill 101 and therefore not authorized to offer English services to townsfolk.
Of course somebody complained and now the OQLF has announced that it is launching an investigation.
In reaction, the defiant mayor told the 'Ofeece' that he wouldn't knuckle under. In a stinging rebuke he told them that;

"Despite the laws, we have an ethical obligation and moral duty to serve a significant portion of our population in English. It's a question of history - the English founded this city - and of the dignity for our people and our seniors..."
"Leave us in peace, I have no use for the insecure and culturally impoverished who are tightly intertwined with the French language, who live their lives waiting for their disappearance in North America," he said. "To focus on this linguistic insecurity, Quebec has been diminished - Ontairio which said yes to immigration has passed us by.

(Thanks for the story, Kevin)

Accent on Stupidity

You might remember Yves Michaud, the victim of a National Assembly unanimous condemnation back in 2000, for disparaging remarks he made about Jews not being good citizens because they all voted NO in the referendum.
Michaud was highly traumatized by the condemnation which essentially branded him as an antisemite and ever since, he and other militant sovereigntists have been laboring to overturn that resolution, asking members who voted for the motion to recant.
In the meantime, Michaud remains an activist defender of shareholder rights, buying a few shares in public companies and then attending annual shareholder meetings to air his grievances.

This week he used the shareholders meeting for the giant Quebec food chain METRO, to complain, believe it or not, about the fact that an accent doesn't appear over the 'E' in 'Metro."
Again readers, I'm not making this up.
"Michaud says he's filed a complaint with the Office québécois de la langue française (OLF) saying the grocery chain is violating the French language charter because the word 'Metro' without the accent aigu on the 'e' doesn't exist in the French language. He says it's unacceptable to twist the name of a company that has its roots in Quebec, which serves a majority-francophone clientele and whose shareholders are mostly Quebeckers." CJAD CTV

By the way it seems that Quebecor, the pride of Quebec's Pierre-Karl Péladeau, is hearing Mr. Michaud's footsteps behind him.
The company announced that they are seriously looking at putting two accents on its corporate name, at least in Quebec.

How big a deal is an accent?
Well it doesn't seem to bother Parisians who omit the accent in question, on their stylish subway signs!

In another flight of incredible language stupidity, another French language supremacist, Pierre Gauthier, is furious that a Chicoutimi theatre is showing English movies one day a week.
It seems that the nearby Canadian Forces airbase at Bagotville has lost it's on-base theatre and has asked the local theater to fill in. The base, of course, is home to many English servicemen and their families.

Mr Gauthier has called the screening of English movies in public an 'accommodation' that should never have been allowed.
After all, the advertising of the movie will be in English and regular patrons, other than air force people are free to attend as well, a dreadful and dangerous situation that will surely lead the hitherto ever-pure Saguenéens down the evil path of Anglicization. Link{Fr}

I'm not really sure what this blowhard wants, can he be actually suggesting a public prohibition of movies in English?

In a letter to Le Devoir a reader complained bitterly that a lounge act in the Mont Tremblant casino was singing in English and talking to each other in English as well. Link{Fr}

By the way, rumors flying around Quebec City has it that Madonna will perform at the famous summer music festival. The festival has always featured a lot of English acts, much to the chagrin of French language supremacists.
In the past they've even complained about Paul McCartney performing on the Plains of Abraham, so it's likely we'll hear from the usual suspects again.
If the Madonna concert is a go, it will likely play before largest concert audience ever assembled in Quebec. Oh my!

Students go nuts
A student organization form UQAM is doing back flips to disavow itself from a pamphlet put out under its name .

"We have to hit very hard, harder than the student movement ever has: kidnapping, sabotage, destruction of property- and we haven't got many tries to succeed"

YIKES!
The author is lucky he doesn't live in the United States where Homeland security would have swept down faster than you can say the word 'terrorist.' Think I'm kidding.. Read this
In Quebec it's Ho Hum! Link{Fr}

Shafia case was affected by English-French snafu: officials

"When the Shafia girls went looking for help from youth-protection officials three years ago, their case was hampered by a uniquely Canadian bureaucratic snafu.

Some of their pleas were lost in translation. Or, more precisely, their different complaints were handled by separate English- and French-language agencies that failed to share case information.

Youth protection is divided by language in Montreal, with one agency handling English complaints and the other handling ones in French and other languages." Read More at CTV

Picture of the week

Nothing to do with F versus E, but I couldn't resist posting this photo.
There is a bit of controversy raging over the issue of 'smart' electric meters that Hydro-Quebec has started installing, over issues of electromagnetic emanations.
I've no idea whether this is a legitimate concern or another case of fear over reason, like Montreal's refusal to fluoridate water.

At any rate, this Boucherville resident took matters into his own hands and wrapped his meter in three layers of aluminum foil! Link{Fr}
Perhaps Mr. Jean-Pierre Grauby, pictured above, should consider other 'suspect' emanations and protect himself whenever he goes out, like this guy pictured on the right!
(Thanks for the story, Sam.)

Suicide is Painless
Next week is Suicide Prevention Week, as good a reason as any to report on a story about the controversy between a couple of Quebec journalists and a talented blogger, in relation to Quebec's relatively high suicide rate, or relatively normal suicide rate, depending on who you believe.

Readers are familiar with Jean-François Lisée, who takes it upon himself to debunk federalist and right-wing 'myths' every now and then in his column.
Mr. Lisée is an expert at picking and choosing statistics to distort reality. According to Mr. Lisée, Quebec is financially secure, with no debt problem, outperforming almost every other economy and whose residents are much richer than Americans... I kid you not.

This week however his claim that Quebec's suicide rate is not that bad got the goat of fellow journalist Richard Martineau who wrote a stinging rebuttal. Since then, much ink has been spilled between the fellow Journal de Montreal columnists.

The polemic revolves around Mr. Lisée's claim that Quebec's suicide rate is not that bad.
In his article entitled Québec : only 26th in world suicide ranking he says:

"Quebec ranks 26th, behind countries like Finland, Belgium, Switzerland, France and Austria."

I suppose that's true, but what Mr. Lisée omits to tell us is that there are 80 countries with lower suicide rates and that Canada ranks 40th on that list.
If one were to remove the Quebec component of that Canadian statistic and counted only the RoC, the ranking would certainly be much lower, because the Quebec suicide rate is almost double that of the RoC.

BUT IT IS NOT A PROBLEM according to Mr. Lisée.

By the way, in a wonderful rebuttal piece written by the very talented DAVID, Mr. Lisée is soundly thrashed for his blatant disregard for reality.
In that piece, we are told that the suicide rate for adult males in Quebec is actually higher than that of US servicemen, active or retired!

Mr. Lisée has published a book supposedly demolishing other anti-Quebec myths. This very same blogger has undertaken to counter these arguments and I'll report on that effort periodically.

Happy Birthday Judy!

Have a good weekend!

Forced English Immersion in Grade 6 a Bad Idea

2012-02-01T00:00:00.000-05:00

When I was a wee boy of six, my mother decided it would be grand if I took some piano lessons, for reasons that I still can't fathom.

I think it's a great idea for parents to expose children to all sorts of skills at an early age, be it sports like golf, an instrument like piano or learning experiences in science or literature. Who knows what hidden talent might be exposed, like a buried treasure waiting to be discovered.

I could have been revealed as possessing a hidden talent, a budding child prodigy like Tiger Woods who started playing golf at two years old and who broke eighty at age eight. I might have been a Mozart who composed and gave concerts from the age of five or a Bobby Fisher, who became a chess grandmaster at 13. (oooh--let's forget that last one!)

Alas, I was none of the above and loathed the piano lessons, realizing almost immediately that I had zero talent or love for the avocation.
After two years of intensive study my mother gave up, liberating me from the heavy burden of attempting to master a skill, that I did not want to acquire.

It took me less than a year to forget everything I learned and today, I couldn't tell you where Middle C lies on the keyboard.

WHICH brings me to Premier Charest who announced that Francophone students in Grade Six are to be exposed to an entire semester taught in English. Parents are largely supportive, expressing an overwhelming desire to see their children become bilingual.

But I'm doubtful the project will have a lasting effect, and just like me and my piano lessons, it's likely a colossal waste of time, effort and money.
For the vast majority of students who will be forced into a traumatic social experiment, it is the equivalent of throwing a non-swimmer into the pool without any thought, in the misguided belief that they will learn to swim.

Of course the usual suspects are against the idea of intensive English in Grade six, especially the teachers who dislike the idea for a variety of reasons, claiming among other things, that for many students, the project is above their abilities.
I'm not sure I disagree.

What I find troubling is that the project seems to have been embarked upon without much thought or study, as if the Premier and eduction Minister cooked up the idea all by themselves, because it seemed like a good idea, one that would be popular with the voters.

But why Grade six?

Many of we Anglos have sent our kids to French daycare, preschool or kindergarten in an attempt to get them on the road to bilingualism sooner than later.

Young children, exposed to a second language do remarkably well and learn much faster than older kids or adults.
Studies have indicated this very fact.

"The critical period hypothosis was first proposed by Montreal neurologist Wilder Penfield and co-author Lamar Roberts in a 1959 paper Speech and Brain Mechanisms, and was popularized by Eric Lenneberg in 1967 with Biological Foundations of Language."

According to the theory, the earlier a child is exposed to a second language, the faster they learn. After puberty the ability to acquire a second language nosedives. Hmm....

The choice of Grade six for this grand social experiment is explained by the fear that francophone children who learn English too successfully when young, are in danger of hurting their French and so the teaching of English intensely is delayed to grade six, when the benefits are diminished.

Those of us who are bilingual, truly bilingual, can testify that learning a second language is not as easy as one intensive semester.
It takes years of study and practice, there is no easy way around it.

I'm all for learning English (or French for Anglophones) but this plan has almost zero chance of success, the idea that the moribund education department could pull off the project logistically, especially the problem of finding the hundreds of qualified English teachers necessary, is beyond credulity.
The school boards will have to line up buses at the Fairview Shopping Mall and kidnap Anglos, shipping them off the Saguenay and parts beyond.

The reality is that for two-thirds to three-quarters of Francophone Quebecers, English plays no role in their lives. They remain as disconnectd to English, as British Columbians are to French.

For most of these children who are to be exposed to an English-only curriculum in Grade six, they may as well be teaching Chinese or Klingon. The program has the same dubious chance of success as forcing everyone to take a semester of piano lessons.
Without a piano at home and a desire to continue to practice and learn over the many succeeding years, the chance of success is nil.

The truth that parents don't want to face is that in order for children to become proficient in the language of Shakespeare, they themselves must get involved.

There is no magic bullet or short cut, even if parents and the government dream that there is.

Parents shouldn't depend on the schools to do the work for them, they can provide a steady diet of English and they can start at a much earlier age than grade six.
More francophone children have learned English through video games and a few hours of English television than through all the efforts by educators in elementary schools.

Those parents who are not interested should remain free to make their own decisions, just as British Columbians can choose a second language for their children, or not.

I hate to say it and I know I'll be attacked for this, but for many Quebecers who spend their whole lives in a French environment, learning elementary English is all that's necessary, so that when they travel, they can survive.

How about some state-sponsored high school courses in GLOBISH.
For many, it is the imperfect, but reasonable answer.

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The Ignominious End of Gilles Duceppe

2012-01-30T00:00:00.000-05:00

A PICTURE TO REMEMBER!

Witnessing the sudden collapse and downfall of the political career of Gilles Duceppe, I must admit to a raging case of schadenfreude.
No politician deserves such an ignominious fall from grace more than the duplicitous, back-stabbing opportunist that defines the persona of Gilles Duceppe.

As you can imagine, I'm no fan, not so much for his separatist politics, but rather for his proclivity to bite the hand that feeds him.
We Canadians have paid his Parliamentary salary for over twenty years and now are obliged to pay his 140k pension until God knows when, during which time, he has and will continue to tell the world that we Canadians are exploiters and colonialists.

The ethics scandal that has brought him down is particularly satisfying because it was Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc Quebecois that presented himself and itself as more Cathoic than the Pope.
Two elections ago, the Bloc campaigned on the platform of honesty and integrity and so there's a sense that Duceppe is receiving his just desert.
Like a pious televangelist who is ruined when caught cheating and whoring, it sets the world right, for a moment, anyways.

My favorite comment on the affair by a Le Devoir reader;
"Duceppe l’arroseur arrosé, Youppi" (Duceppe the sprinkler, sprinkled)

Unethical or illegal, Duceppe displayed the shady behavior of a disgruntled employee who steals from the company where he works, while continuing to cash a cheque.

Whether guilty or innocent of using public funds for partisan political ends, it doesn't really matter.
Despite a spirited defense put on for him by Le Devoir and assorted hardliners, wherein they claimed that he technically violated no rules, the public has already made up its mind......Guilty.

Mr. Duceppe didn't exactly help his cause, his actions after the revelations were made, were those of a guilty man.

I am reminded of a story told to me a while back when I participated in a golf tournament put on by the Montreal police. A senior Montreal detective regaled our table at the 19th hole with a story about the down and dirty investigative methods employed by cops.
In this particular case two suspects were picked up for a crime that only one committed. They were both placed in jail overnight having been told they'd be charged in the morning.
Overnight the cops observed their behavior.
The first suspect was agitated and angry, demanding a lawyer and telling all who would listen that he was innocent.
The second suspect remained calm, asked warders for a cigarette and turned in early, sleeping quite well.
In the morning the detective let the agitated suspect go and charged the other.
You see, as my detective friend explained, the behavior exhibited by the men, clearly indicated that one was innocent, the other guilty.
The first, furious that he was being charged with a crime he did not commit, the second resigned to the fact that he was caught.

Who did Gilles Duceppe closely emulate, the guilty suspect or the innocent?

There are politicians around the world charged with crimes or accused of various misdeeds who almost universally fight the charges tooth and nail while remaining in office. It's par for the course.
Silvio Berlusconi spent his whole political career under an ethics cloud and never wavered. a good chunk of the Israeli cabinet is under scrutiny for either ethics violations or outright criminality. American senators and congressmen are regularly subject to impeachment through a process that takes years to play out.
Who resigns? Practically nobody.

Mr Duceppe cut and run, hoping that if he left the political scene, perhaps he would be left alone.

Had he come out and raged against the allegations against him, labeling the charges as partisan attacks, I'm sure that he could have withstood the attack, but Duceppe is a chocoladnicky, a Russian expression for someone apt to melt under the heat.

Now there are those who say that Duceppe used the ethics investigation as a convenient device to extricate himself from a sticky situation where his attempted coup against Pauline Marois failed.

I find it a little hard to believe, but no matter.

His attempt to take over the leadership was a half-assed effort that was so badly planned and executed that I seriously question his skills as a politician.

Once he embarked on his betrayal of Marois and she got wind of it, she put the mutiny down in short order.
The incredible thing about it all, is that if he had done nothing and remained on the sidelines as a 'loyal' separatist, Marois would have collapsed under her own weight and the leadership would have come to him without lifting a finger!

All this has led me to conclude that Duceppe was no brainiac, but rather an opportunist who talked up a storm but was always out manoeuvred by the Prime Minister of the day or Pauline Marois back home. Readers will remember that this is the second time she beat back an attempt by Duceppe to take over the PQ.

Over the twenty odd years in Ottawa, the Bloc led by Duceppe brought Quebec not an iota of benefit, in fact, its very presence insured the opposite.
In asking Quebecers to support a party riding the pine of ignominy, in the opposition benches of Parliament, the Bloc robbed Quebecers of representation in cabinet and the halls of power, a frightful price to pay for the luxury of thumbing ones nose at the hated Anglos in the RoC.

I'm glad that Gilles Duceppe is going out a disgraced loser, because that was what he was his whole career, a disgrace who cost Quebec influence and power, a humiliating presence in Ottawa that rendered Quebec impotent and irrelevant.

His phony Don Quixotesque act, tilting at federalist windmills has crippled this province incalculably.

As he exits the stage a disgraced and beaten man, it remains a bittersweet victory for federalists.

After all, we will have the pleasure of paying him a handsome pension for the rest of his natural life.

The idea of Gilles Duceppe in retirement, sipping margaritas in Aruba, on our dime, while lobbing the occasional separatist bomb at we evil Canadians, remains a bitter pill to swallow.

Good riddance to bad rubbish!

Shafias- Please Rot in HELL!!!!!

2012-01-29T17:05:00.001-05:00

Sorry for my rage, but I want to give readers an opportunity to publicly describe their feelings towards a ~~family~~ trio that represents all the evil traits that we do not want in Canada.

I was a bit worried that the jury wouldn't believe that these fanatics could actually murder their children and/or siblings because it is an act, practicably incomprehensible to Canadians.

REST IN PEACE

I don't know if this is fair to say, but I hope they get a rough ride in prison.

I prepared this, just in case they were acquitted.

Readers, I cannot describe my hatred, rage and contempt.... Can you?

How can we keep these fanatics out of our country?

Sunday Housekeeping- Trolls

2012-01-29T00:00:00.000-05:00

As regular readers might have noticed, I've unfortunately had to crack down on one-line insults that bring nothing to this blog

It serves no purpose to go through 200 comments where 50-75 are pure trash, with no redeeming value. I'd rather have 10-15 well thought out contributions, than 200 idiotic and insulting posts.

By the way, I have the ability to delete comments without leaving a trace, but as of now will continue to show readers where and which comments are blocked.

I do not moderate comments on an hourly basis so it's possible something obnoxious is up for a while, try not to respond, I'll take it down ASAP.
If you see something that should be taken down, let me know, but do not quote the offensive material, just provide the date and time. There's no use propagating trash by repeating it.

As for Trolls, I will not take down your comment just because they are meant to incite, as long as they don't violate decency standards. Please try to be witty, if you are trying to provoke.

What is offensive?
You're all literate and can pretty much can guess what will be taken down or not.

English or French, federalist or sovereigntist, the rules are the same and everyone will be treated respectfully and equally, but please don't test my patience with trash talk.

I repeat that I will not suppress contradictory views to mine or those of most readers, healthy discourse is an integral part of this community, but to those tho just want to disrupt our conversations with banal insults, please go away.

Here is something important;
You can always delete your own comment by clicking on delete. Obviously, you can't delete other people's comments.

If you change your mind about what you've written either because you were tired, drunk or made some embarrassing typos, here what you should do;
Delete the original post and write a new one.
In your new post use the word REWRITE on a separate line, at the beginning or the end of the post and I'll completely remove any trace of the original.

Finally, you might notice that the time stamp on your comment is three hours early and unfortunately, I can't do anything about it as it is a BLOGGER problem that they are supposedly working on (although I cannot fathom how they haven't corrected this so far.)

Thank yo for your support and your contributions.

This January has been our busiest month ever with almost 50,000 page views and 12,000 different visitors.

Most of the success of NDOA lies in reader contributions and I pledge to police the comment section more assiduously, making for a better read and a better debate.

Best regards....

French versus English Volume 45

2012-01-27T00:00:00.000-05:00

Political science prize judge quits over French flap

"Judging from the 18-year record of a prestigious prize for Canadian writing on political theory, French-Canadians are not the finest political theorists.

Since its creation in 1994, the C.B. Macpherson Prize awarded by the Canadian Political Science Association (CPSA) has always gone to a work in English, even though it celebrates “the best book published in English or in French.”

But a judge for the 2012 prize has resigned this week, alleging the award is so stacked against francophone writers that most do not bother submitting their work any more." Read the rest of the story

NDP leadership candidates vow support for Quebec rights
"Seven of the eight NDP federal leadership candidates came to Montreal Sunday to express their unqualified support for the party’s declaration of French rights.

Among other things, the Sherbrooke Declaration on Quebec recognizes French as the “language of work” and the “common public language.” It also supports Quebec’s right to secede from Canada on a simple majority referendum vote.

...The only candidate to trigger a “bravo” from the audience was Cullen. The MP for Skeena-Bulkley Valley in B.C. apologized for the NDP’s support of the nomination of justice Michael J. Moldaver to the Supreme Court of Canada. Moldaver does not speak French. Read the rest of the story

(Editorial comment- Nathan Cullen MP for Skeena Pukey Valley- There's 'obsequious' and then there's, "Thank you for shitting in my hat."
You are now on my official list of politicians I hate..)

Newt Gingrich's French connection

"In a press conference today, Newt Gingrich admitted that he spoke French "once upon a time," and joked to a French reporter who asked him whether he spoke the language "Do you know John Kerry?" Barely a week ago, Gingrich released this ad which compared Romney to the 2004 Democratic nominee — in part because of his fluency in French." Watch the attack ad

Ex-Hab slams Montreal-"It's a big mess"

"In an interview, former Hab Jaroslav Spacek sounds off on Montreal, the Habs and the language debate. Have a listen.

Yikes!
Quebecer up for Academy Award
Quebec's own Philippe Falardeau's 'Monsieur Lazhar' has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best foreign film. I haven't seen the film but from all accounts it's a poignant story about an Algerian immigrant, who is hired to replace an elementary school teacher who committed suicide. While the class goes through a long healing process, nobody in the school is aware of Bachir's painful former life. Montreal Gazette Alternate Link
I did see one of his other movies La Moitié gauche du frigo (The left-hand side of the fridge,) which I actually liked a lot, a story about the trials of an unemployed fellow who shares an apartment with a room-mate. By the way, if you're wondering about the title, it has to do with sharing the apartment refrigerator.

The interesting thing is that Mr. Falardeau, a thirty-something Francophone from Montreal has outstanding English. In a television report from the Sundance festival, he related how busy his life has been promoting the film, from lecturing audiences and giving interview after interview to the American media. When he goes to the Academy Awards, his mastery of English will no doubt help raise his profile and propel his career.
To all the idiots who remind Quebecers that they don't really need English to succeed, meet another successful example of why it's just not true.

Important Conservative fed up with Harper's Quebec snub

“Peter White is about as conservative (and Conservative) as they come. He worked at Brian Mulroney’s side throughout the former prime minister’s nine-year tenure. In 2001, he turned his frustration with Jean Chrétien’s seemingly perpetual hold on power into a book, Gritlock, perhaps best described as a blueprint of how to neuter the then-powerful Liberal brand. In his free time, the former Hollinger Inc. executive has relentlessly pushed the Conservative brand in his native Quebec, both as a riding president and party organizer. And he’s sick of trying.

In a scathing open letter addressed to Canadians in general and the Conservative party in particular, White roundly criticizes the Conservative Party of Canada for ignoring Francophones in general and Quebec in particular. “Today the voice of Quebec is virtually absent in Ottawa’s halls of power, or if present, it is a voice grown mighty small, and mighty easy to ignore,” White writes in the letter dated Jan. 12. “Since the election of May 2, 2011, many Quebec observers have concluded that Mr. Harper has consciously decided to ignore Quebec, now that he has convincingly demonstrated that he can win a majority without it.” Read the rest of the story in Maclean's & see the letter

Patrick Roy advises Canadiens to tank season
I wonder if Patrick Roy scuttled any chance of becoming head coach of the Montreal Canadiens by going public with his idea of tanking this lost season and aiming to finish as low as possible in order to secure a premier draft choice.
It is a concept that everybody thinks about, but nobody in a position of responsibility would ever dare say it out loud.
After all, losing a game on purpose is about the biggest crime one can commit in sports. Any coach or general manager who admits to doing so would certainly face a long suspension by the league if not an outright ban.
Is Patrick really that stupid? Link{Fr}

Conservatives rise in Quebec poll
These last months we've heard nothing but pissing and moaning from Quebec politicians and the entire French media over the fact that Stephen Harper is ignoring Quebec and shortchanging the province in every department.
You'd figure that the Conservatives polling numbers would take a dive, even from the horrific 16% level that they garnered in the last federal election.

But take a look at the latest numbers, which I pulled off of Mario Dumont's news magazine show, last night.

WOW!
The Conservatives have increased their popularity by over 50% since last May!!!
My only explanation..........TOUGH LOVE!

Hydro-Quebec backs down on English
Last week I told you about an international scientific conference that Hydro-Quebec was hosting in Montreal that was to be held in English (as are all these scientific conferences.) After intense pressure from the usual suspects, the utility has now agreed to pay for simultaneous translation, which absolutely nobody will use. Original story{Fr}

In a letter to Le Devoir Professor Robert Emery Prud'homme, a chemistry professor at the University of Montreal, sets the record straight about science and French .

"Without making a thorough investigation, I can say at least 95% - and probably 99% - of scientific articles published by Quebec researchers working in francophone institutions in chemistry, physics and engineering, are in English. It's the same in France and Belgium.

...the question of the use of English in science and in scientific conferences, even in Quebec, has been settled for several years, scientists have de facto chosen English.".

If you read French, this article about the subject of French and English in science, is extremely interesting Link{Fr}

PQ updating independence plans
The Parti Quebecois has announced that it is updating 148 studies concerning the subject of sovereignty and independence. I'm not kidding.

Here's a hilarious quote from the article in La Presse. Link{Fr}

"When the PQ was in power in 2001, the government gave a mandate to Claude Corbo, at that time professor at the University of Quebec at Montreal (UQAM), to review these studies, sort and update them as needed.

"For Pauline Marois, the PQ leader, the purpose of the new "Committee to Study Sovereignty" is to support arguments in favor of sovereignty.

However, if we rely on the previous studies by Corbo, there is no indication that the data collected along the way will go in that direction at all.

This is why the party reserves the right to publish or not to publish the results of the work." Yikes!

At any rate, it's like thinking about what you'd do if you won the Lotto...
It's fun to daydream.... a yacht?.....a mansion?... sovereignty?

Leading up to next MONDAY'S POST entitled-'The Ignominious End of Gilles Duceppe,' here's a quick primer of the Gilles Duceppe scandal and it's possible outcome, meant for the reading impaired and those with a distinctly low attention span.

Further reading;

French versus English Volume 44

Downfall of the PQ Painful to Watch

2012-01-25T00:00:00.000-05:00

Even for federalists, watching the PQ go through its agonizing death throes is a bit much to take. Like a cancer patient ravaged with the disease, but who fights the inevitable conclusion tooth and nail, even those who care, must ask would it not be better if the patient was put out of its misery sooner than later.

Ever since last May's federal election that drove the Bloc out of Ottawa, die-hard sovereigntists held onto the belief that the meltdown was a hiccup, an obstacle like so many others, with the project of Quebec independence remaining intact and inviolate.

Alas for them, circumstances dictate an alternate reality, one where Quebecers have given up on their forty year flirtation with sovereignty, where even those still willing to support the independence option admit that the project is no longer doable.

And so quite simply, the CAQ of Francois Legault is rising to replace the PQ as the natural alternative to the Quebec Liberal Party. It's a party that preaches nationalism without any threat of an actual referendum, something that is striking a chord with many Quebecers who wish to maintain a strong nationalistic front against Ottawa without any of the painful drama promised by hard-liner sovereigntists.

And so, many separatists, including defecting members of the PQ caucus, are moving over to the CAQ, something that Premier Charest is trying to exploit as an issue, calling the CAQ a separatist party in sheep's clothing.

The truth is rather the opposite, those separatists moving over to the CAQ are going to the safest place where they can go to give up their sovereigntist dream without sacrificing their pride.
In order to assuage the guilty consciences of these fallen sovereigntists, Mr. Legault has said that in the future, perhaps ten years, they might review the independence option, a convenient lie meant to make the painful transition more palatable.

What remains are the hard-liners in the PQ and their supporters who live in a fantasy world where they believe, that they can turn things around by pushing the sovereignty and referendum option even harder.
Its like a store raising its prices, in reaction to a market survey that indicates that consumers have rejected the company's products because they are already too expensive. Talk about disconnect...

The reality is that the PQ is out of leaders and out of options.

As the end approaches, we are treated to a frightening view of the real personality of the members of the Parti Quebecois, the selfish, cruel and incompetent fools who are clawing and fighting each other like pigs in a trough.

The opening salvo in the PQ war of independence was fired by the betrayers, the old guard who quit the party to sit as independents because the party leader couldn't produce a successful independence strategy, where quite frankly, none exists.

Led by the ugly duo of Louise Beaudoin and Louise Lapointe (Jacques Parizeau's wife) and supported by the very simple Pierre Curzi, the betrayal triggered an undisciplined food fight, with Marois served up as the main course.

Then, more betrayers and more defectors, tearful interviews and hand-wringing, the birth of the CAQ, all leading to the inevitable conclusion that the Parti Quebecois is circling the drain.

But reality is hard to accept.
Everybody within and everyone outside the party have suggestions as to how to right the sinking ship, the pages of vigile.net chock full of ideas that smack of flightful fantasy or desperation extraordinaire.

The final straw for the party is the now failed Duceppe gambit.

This desperate belief that if only Gilles Duceppe would take over from Marois, perhaps all could be saved, with party faithfuls telling each other that we federalsits would be quaking in our boots at the threat of so formidable an opponent.

This is of course, that very same Gilles Duceppe who just eight months ago led the separatists to their greatest electoral debacle ever. What galling fantasy to believe we'd be afraid.

And so in the fine tradition of the PQ, the knives were unsheathed by Marois supporters and Duceppe was gutted like a fish by a monger. Et tu, Pauline?

At least this time it was the hardliners feeling the hard edge of the blade.

The political tragicomedy continues to run unchecked with today's chapter, a blueprint published in the form of an open letter by the insufferable, Bernard Landry, the ex leader of the PQ.
Here he provides us with his valuable insight, a road map to lead Quebec out of the desert and on towards the promised land.
The solution- a quick referendum. Arghh...

The overwhelming reacting of Quebecers to his open letter? -Indifference....

While hardline PQers and their diminishing band of supporters piss and moan in public, their audience is gone.
The PQ isn't destroyed over infighting as we are led to believe.
The PQ is destroyed because sovereignty is no longer relevant.

It's over...

Ladies and gentlemen of the sovereignty movement, turn out the lights on your way out and please, don't let the door hit you in the ass as you leave.

Pauline Marois Destroys Gilles Duceppe

2012-01-23T00:00:00.000-05:00

My least favorite politician in Canada is the thoroughly dislikeable Gilles Duceppe, a weasel of a politician and a poster boy representing everything we Anglos hate about separatists who look to cynically fleece Canada, while plotting its destruction.

Whoever invented the word "smarmy,' must have been thinking of Gilles Duceppe, it describes his character perfectly;
(smarmy- sleazy, self-centered and insincere. One who has his own agenda which conflicts with the interests of others. Very fake and/or two-faced.)

One of the worst things I hate about Mr Duceppe is his manifest glee in fleecing Canadians for his own personal and political benefit, seeing no contradiction in collecting a $140,000, while working to destroy the country that pays it.

Would he have become leader of the PQ and get elected to the National Assembly, I've no doubt that he would have continued collecting his pension, with no compunction or embarrassment over the double dipping, as long as it is the federal government was paying for it.

As of late Mr. Duceppe has embarked upon a behind the scene campaign to destabilize the leadership of Pauline Marois, all the while smiling before the cameras and professing his love and support for the separatist leader.

A few months ago, Duceppe was very public in his support of Pauline, but recent events, especially the continued defections from the PQ ranks, has moved him to go after the Marois' job, once and for all.

Mr. Duceppe is not one to do the dirty work himself and so has delegated responsibility to his minions (Pierre-Paul Roy, Bob Dufour and François Leblanc) to organize and carry out a back room putsch against Madame Marois.
It's the nature of the rat that he is, to let others do for him, what he is not prepared to do openly.

Madame Marois called on him to take responsibility for his actions and demanded point blank that he declare his intentions and whether he would respect his word given months ago, not to destabilize her leadership.
In response Mr. Duceppe made a wishy-washy statement when interviewed on the radio.;
"I trust that the PQ leader and members will make the right decisions .."

For Marois it was the last straw.

"NO I DIDN'T" "YES YOU DID!!"

And so, on Friday, La Presse published an extremely damaging ethics story about Duceppe, which is being widely quoted by newspapers across the country.

But here's an important fact that nobody has yet to report.

An ultra reliable source has told me that it was the Marois camp that leaked the information to La Presse, in an effort to harm Duceppe and check his advance on her leadership.
It makes sense if you think about it, especially the timing.
It seems that the information had been held in reserve by Marois just in case Duceppe went back on his word (which he did) and so she decided that she had no other option but to unload on him with any or all pretenses of separatist solidarity tossed aside.

It's a story that really came as no surprise to me, a further account of Duceppe's dishonest and cavalier abuse of public money for personal and political benefit. Read the original article in French
Read the National Post recapitulation

"The former leader of the Bloc Quebecois, Gilles Duceppe paid the salary of the Chief of his party, Gilbert Gardner, for seven years from the budget provided by the House of Commons for the operation of his office in Ottawa, La Presse has learned.

This practice violates the rules of the House of Commons since the funds provided elected officials must be used to finance the activities of Parliament and not partisan activities. The other parties have confirmed to the press that their CEO is paid by the respective funds of the party, not money received from the House of Commons.

Mr. Gardner, who worked at the headquarters of the Bloc in Montreal and occupied himself with the management and organization of the party, was hired in 2004 by Mr. Duceppe. He pocketed a salary that exceeded $ 100, 000 in the last years of his term......
La Presse has also learned that Marie-France Charbonneau, the significant other of his chief of staff, François LeBlanc, was paid by the Bloc leader's office as a consultant while she was pursuing a master's degree. She was also paid during the time she was writing a book on the 20th anniversary of the Bloc Quebecois with Professor Guy Lachapelle, Concordia University.
Although Marie-France Charbonneau was officially a councilor to Gilles Duceppe, she rarely set her feet down in the House of Commons. "We did not know what she was doing apart from writing this book," said the Bloc Quebecois. Ms. Charbonneau received an annual salary of more than $ 90,000, according to our information

The article elicited comments from Maxime Bernier of the Conservatives and Marc Garneau of the Liberals who both blasted the former Bloc leader as a hypocrite for wrongfully spending Parliamentary money on partisan politics, while complaining about the ethics of others.

When Duceppe lost his seat, all the aforementioned 'employees' lost their jobs as well, but all were eligible for six months severance pay, courtesy of Canadian taxpayers.
All three were immediately rehired by the Bloc Quebcois office in Montreal at essentially the same salaries, something that caused a certain uneasiness among Bloc members.

When Daniel Paillé, the new Bloc leader assumed his position in December, the first order of business was to fire them all, so clearly there were forces in the Bloc that were unhappy with Duceppe's arrangements.
Someone within the Bloc, an enemy of Duceppe, leaked the story about the wrongful use of Parliamentary funds, to Marois.

As to the issue of paying those salaries with taxpayer money, Mr. Duceppe doesn't deny the facts, but dismisses the complaint about the spending as a partisan political attack, nothing else.

It remains to be seen what will happen.
Those who wanted to see Mr. Duceppe succeed Pauline Marois as leader of the PQ worked overtime to spin the story as nothing but politics, rather than ethics.

Le Devoir, a nationalist newspaper, reported on the La Presse story rather dryly, but what is more interesting are the comments under the story where about eight out of ten readers supported Mr. Duceppe and proposed that the so-called scandal was a hatchet job cooked up by federalists. See the comments here.
But one reader remained unconvinced of Duceppe's innocence.

"Typical PQ reaction...
When a newspaper exposes a scandal against the Quebec Liberal Party, they applaud wildly.
When the same newspaper denounces the mismanagement of the PQ or Bloc, they talk about propaganda, revenge, political operation, etc ...
And they believe themselves to be credible?"

So readers, I'm not so sure those defending Duceppe will be entirely successful.
The fact that he paid his chief of staff's girlfriend out of taxpayer money will be not be easily forgiven by the public.

Voters may be simple and not understand the intricacies over whether Duceppe did something wrong in using House of Commons money to pay the salaries of those involved in partisan politics, but providing someone a 'No-show job' is something even the uninitiated understand to be graft.

Look for the lovely Marie-France Charbonneau to come under a fierce attack by journalists sensing a juicy scandal.
I look forward to hear her denials. I'm not sure that the Bloc, which has already cleaned house of all these Duceppe cronies is ready to defend her.
Who knows, she could be thrown under the bus. It could be interesting.

It also remains to be seen what the legal opinion ordered by Joe Comartin (Ndp), chair of the Parliamentary committee responsible for overseeing these expenditures, will reveal.
In a worst case scenario the Bloc would have to refund up to a million dollars to the government.
It's also been reported that other Bloc members are also being investigated for similar abuses.

Daniel Paillé, the current leader of the Bloc, refused comment, distancing himself from the story by saying that the affair predated his leadership.

We could be in for a scandal on a par with the Sponsorship affair that destroyed the Liberals.

And so the battle between Marois and Duceppe has exploded into open warfare, a drag'em out brawl that ended with a devastating second round knockout counterpunch by Marois.

Yesterday Duceppe admitted defeat and announced that he was withdrawing from politics.

Well played Madame Marois. Game....Set......Match...

For federalists, it's also Christmas in January!

Keep on truckin', Pauline, the longer you remain at the helm, the happier we federalists remain!

Stay tuned....

***************UPDATE***************

In a television report, late last night, Jean Lapierre (an Liberal ex-politician and star pundit) reported that every MP is furnished with a manual explaining the rules and that if they misspent money, they, not the party are personally responsible for reimbursement.
He also intimated that Duceppe is clearly guilty of violating the rules, which according to him, are pretty clear.

SWEET!

French versus English Volume 44

2012-01-20T00:00:00.000-05:00

Official bilingualism costs $2.4 Billion a year: study
"The 10 provinces spend a total of $900-million annually on minority language services, with the bulk going toward French-language education outside Quebec and English-language education inside Quebec. Ontario spends the most, doling out $623-million — or $1,275 for each minority member. While Quebec ranks third in overall spending at $51-million annually, it spends the least per minority member — mostly anglophones — at just $85 a head."
By the way, the study was written by a University of Montreal professor, François Vaillancourt. Link
Not surprising, French language militants have remained rather mute in reaction to the story.
Don Macpherson does a nice job destroying the hackneyed myth, repeated ad nauseum by French language militants, that Anglophones are the most pampered minority in the world.

Anglos in Quebec the ‘best-treated minority’? Think again"
Whenever we English-speaking Quebecers are so ungrateful as to complain about the anti-English policies of our provincial government, we’re told to shut up, because we’re “the best-treated minority in the world.”
Never mind that we’re being “treated” with our own money, since we shoulder our share of Quebec’s tax burden, among the heaviest in North America.
But by one important standard, a study published this week by the Fraser Institute suggests we’re not even treated the best among Canada’s official-language minorities.
In fact, in terms of money spent by the provincial governments to provide additional public services in the minority languages – French in the other provinces and English here – we’re by far the worst-treated." Read the rest of the story in the Gazette Alternate Link

Language Fail
You'd think newspapers would pride themselves on correct spelling, translation, syntax and otherwise all things grammatical.
After all, they're not lowly bloggers! n'est-ce pas??

But it cuts both ways, here an editorial cartoon in La Presse is trying to make the point that the Montreal Canadiens are going ENGLISH by displaying a workman in a cherry-picker changing the name of the arena from the 'Centre Bell'' to the 'Bell Center.'
The joke falls flat when one realizes that when describing an arena in Canada, the word Centre is actually spelled the same way in both French and English, as in Toronto's Air Canada Centre, or the MTS Centre in Winnipeg.

Disastrous Unemployment spike bothers nobody
You'd think Quebec newspapers would be running front page banner headlines in relation to the catastrophic rise in the unemployment rate as Quebec has lost tens of thousand of jobs over the last six months.
But of course, Randy Cunneyworth's lack of French and a couple of unilingual bosses in high places is much, more important.

Check out this graph, which underscores the horrific result wherein the Quebec unemployment rate rose by a whopping 2%, while in the RoC the rate actually dropped marginally.
I guess the party is over, where Quebec was actually ahead of the country during the big bad days of the recession and has returned to its traditional position as chief basket case among Canada's big four provinces.
In a year of cross-Canada recovery, Quebec managed to lose over 51,000 jobs.
On Thursday Louis Harel finally woke up and complained about Air Canada shipping off 140 jobs to Toronto from Montreal. The story broke months ago and I wrote about it then, so I'm not sure why she's complaining now.
With labor trouble at Rio Tinto and White Birch, plus research jobs disappearing, the ongoing disaster continues unabated.
The solution..... more money for the OQLF to harass businesses!

Anglos contribute to decline in English school enrollment

"It's parents like Stefan Gauthier who have been contributing to the diminishing enrollment in the English Montreal School Board.

Gauthier, an Anglophone, is legally allowed under Quebec's language law to send his daughter Emma to an English language public school but opted instead for French.

"For us it just seemed more natural to put the kids in French, at least to start, given that it's a bit of a tougher language," said Gauthier." Read the rest of the story

Boston Bruin fan mocks Montreal over language controversy. from..25stanley.com

Huntington mayor remains defiant
"Even under the microscope of the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF), the Town of Huntington flatly refused to subject the municipal government to Bill 101, adopted in 1977 by the provincial government.
"We learned [Wednesday] that the OQLF launched an investigation following a complaint regarding the application of the Charter of the French language in our municipal affairs," said the mayor of Huntingdon, Stéphane Gendron, in a press release.
"I have already informed the francization officer of the OQLF by telephone, that Bill 101 - regarding municipal governance - had and would not apply in the territory of the City of Huntingdon, said the mayor. It is useless to squander public funds to enforce a law that does not work for our administration. End of story. " Link{Fr}

He's quite a character, this Stéphane Gendron, remember, he's the guy who announced on his television show that Israel had no right to exist..

Ottawa cans language school teachers

"The federal government is getting out of the business of providing language training to its employees, throwing 190 teachers and instructors across Canada out of work.

The move - which started with downsizing in the 1990s, and intensified after a 2006 Treasury Board decision - marks the first time in decades that the government won't be directly offering French and English training to public servants to meet the language requirements of their jobs." Link

I SWEAR I'M NOT MAKING THIS UP!...
Interpreter, ~~please~~ s.v.p

The letter writer was upset about what he considered an intolerable situation in certain of Montreal's French schools which have a large body of immigrant students whose parents don't speak French, but some English.

He gave the example of the Filipino community whose members generally speak pretty good English along with their native Tagalog.

It seems that when these non-French speaking parents come in for the proverbial parent/teacher conferences, those teachers who are bilingual, (the majority) conduct the meeting with the parent in English.

This according to the letter writer is an outrage. No teacher in a French school should ever carry on a meeting in English.

His solution- an interpreter.

The school board should provide an interpreter who would translate the parents English into French for the teacher and translate into English the teacher's French responses.

This even if the teacher speaks fluent English. arggh!!!.... Link{Fr}

Students too dumb to learn English
When anyone starts a conversation with the proverbial "I'm not against this, but...." you can be darn sure that the opposite is true.
Forty Quebec City area teachers signed a letter to the Minister of Education, that started with that old bromide, "We're not against teaching English, but.." and then went on to explain why they think it's a bad idea to force grade six students into taking a semester completely in English.
For the teachers, the main problem is that three-quarters of the students are too dumb to handle it, as well as their parents who would be incapable of dealing the supervision of 'English' homework..... At least they're honest! Link

Every picture tells a story

Here is a wide shot of the anti-Cunneyworth demonstration at the Bell Centre, which ironically, I found it on a separatist website.
What's interesting, is that its possible to get a sense of how big the demonstration actually was, which was a lot smaller than reports would have us believe.
The picture confirms what I reported, that participants ranged between 90-150 people and in no way came close to the 500 people reported by some media outlets.

By the way, a shout-out to J.T Utah of 25Stanley.com for scooping everyone on a regular basis in relation to news about the Montreal Canadiens and the NHL in general.
The website was the first to accurately report the amount of demonstrators at the above demonstration at 100, scooping everyone in the mainstream media!
The site was the only place that called out Cammalleri for his selfishness BEFORE he was traded.
Sports reporters are too gutless to report the truth about unrest on the teams they cover because they are in fact glorified jock-sniffers who's first order of business is to protect their job and retain access to the players and the dressing room.
Check out 25Stanley.com.

Mitt Romney mocked for speaking French
"Zut alors! Il parle francais! -Mitt Romney is being skewered in a new Gingrich attack ad for speaking French.According to the TV spot dubbed “The French Connection,” his bilingual ability puts him on par with the liberal flip-flopper who happens to share his home state: John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic candidate." Link

Short Stuff

Terry DiMonte is coming home
Four years in Calgary gave returning CHOM-FM morning man a new perspective on Montreal.

Montreal Gazette Alternate Link

Not enough students in French cegep
The west island of Montreal's only French language cegep is in danger of closing because of a lack of students. The 1,100 student Gérald-Godin college is located in the predominantly English section of town. Link

Westmount honored by Parks Canada
"The federal government has named the city of Westmount, Que. one of Canada's "iconic neighborhoods" for its architecture.
The tiny enclave west of downtown Montreal is one of four places Parks Canada has added to the list of historically significant sites in Canada." Link

Hydro-Quebec to host English-only conference in Montreal
Hydro-Quebec is coming under fire from the usual suspects for hosting an international scientific conference in Montreal that will be conducted exclusively in English.

For Louise Marchand of the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF), keeping French in the research world is a challenge. Even in France, the prestigious INRS has decided to publish its research papers in English only.

For the president of Impératif français, Jean-Paul Perreault, it is 'incredible' that a Quebec state company would host an English-only conference.

"It's a shame to see that this prejudice- English science, English as a world language - is multiplied to the detriment of other national languages by organizations and individuals who should, with pride, say that on our territory, our language must prevail, " Link{Fr}

NDP's Mulcair will keep French citizenship

"NDP leadership hopeful Thomas Mulcair holds dual Canadian and French citizenship and vows to keep both even if he should one day become Canada's prime minister." Link

Your editor' humble opinion;
Mulcair is toast......The Ndp membership outside Quebec is already fearful of a party takeover by Quebec separatists and any illusions about Mulciar's loyalties, vis-a-vis Canada versus Quebec were shattered by the discovery that he's also a closet French citizen.

So Uncle Tom, ...turn out the lights and don't let the door hit you on your way out!

This landed in my email from a reader. Enjoy, but you need French....

Finally.....some semi-original artwork.

Anglophones with Red Hats

2012-01-18T00:00:00.000-05:00

Watching the ongoing Quebec language debate over these last years, I remain sorely disappointed how easily the issue has been manipulated by French language militants into a public discussion based on a series of false premises that twist reality, resulting in public discussions over unreality.

One of the most blatantly false premises concocted by French language militants, is that of the calculation of Quebec English-speakers versus that of French-speakers.

Readers know my position on statistics and how they can be manipulated to more or less support any position one might want to promote or attack.

In this endeavor, French-language militants are expert in parsing, twisting or interpreting facts and statistics to suit their own purposes and it is our own fault and that of the Press that we give these conclusions any weight or credence.

In Fridays post one of our readers made the point that French students are clearly superior to English students because in a certain study among fifteen year-olds, French students scored higher than their English counterparts in reading by a score of 522 to 520, a statistical difference of about one-third of one percentage point.
Of course the alarming dropout rate in high school or the shameful performance in university graduation rates as compared to English speakers is of course conveniently omitted by the commenter, typical of the dishonest tactics regularly utilized by French language promoters, in the statistical war waged on the English.

But more importantly, there is another practice going on in the language debate that is more dangerous and insidious. That is the promulgation of a dishonest debate based on a false premise.

Consider two teams asked to debate whether the flat end of the Earth culminates in a cliff or a waterfall.
Participating in such a debate which starts off with such a decidedly false premise is absolutely pointless and so, the resulting 'winner' of said debate, is really of no consequence!

Believe it or not, we are engaged in that very same type of debate here in Quebec, over the issue of anglophones, Francophones, Ethnics and language.

Here French language militants have cleverly manipulated the basic premise of the debate between the relative weight of the French and English languages in Quebec by making a fundamental and dishonest leap.

I like to call that slight of hand 'Anglos with Red Hats.'
The simple issue of how many people use English rather than French in Quebec is manipulated and twisted by subjecting the rather simple question into a discussion about the number of Anglophones, versus Francophones, versus Ethnics with the resulting false premise adopted, that only 'pure-bred' Anglophones should be counted as English-speakers. It's nonsense.

By dividing English speakers by ethnicity, history or parentage and only counting a portion thereof, French language militants have been able to reduce the number of Quebec English-speakers from the very accurate count of 13.1% made by Statistics Canada, to that of 8%, or 5% or even 3% as I heard make mention.

Every time I hear the phrase "Historical Anglophones" or some other nonsensical qualifier used by militants, I think of 'Anglos with Red Hats,' a device whereby the numbers are reduced by dividing English speakers in sub-groups and then using just one of the sub-groups as a debating point.

Now as I mentioned in an earlier piece, I have a friend whose mother immigrated from Italy over forty years ago and believe it or not, doesn't speak a word of English or French.
She is as you would probably agree, quite an anomaly, not representative at all of the immigrant experience, but it is this type of 'ethnic' that Quebec language militants would have us believe is the norm, rather than the exception, and so can be counted as neither French-speaking or English-speaking, thus removed from the debate. Very convenient...

The reality is that almost every immigrant, their children and their descendants adopt either English or French as the language they use in public, regardless of what they speak around the dinner table.
Even there, the adopted language, either English or French soon becomes the lingua franca of the family and in fact, the children and grand children of immigrants usually lose the 'old' language as assimilation into the host society runs its course.

There are few Quebec Jews who speak the Yiddish that their grandparents came over with from Europe and that holds true among Italian, Greek and other immigrant families where the children and grand children lose fluency in the old tongue rather quickly.
It takes but one or two generations for the descendants of immigrants to become solidly entrenched in the English or French side of Quebec life, language included.

And so, regardless of mother tongue, ethnics adopt either English or French, take your pick.

It is this all important choice that Bill 101 tries to influence, so the government does acknowledge what French militants won't, that Ethnics will by choice become part of the French or English community.

So why all the different classifications?
Why do French-language militants insist on discussing Anglophones, Ethnics or Historical Anglophones versus Francophones, when in fact all we should be looking at is English-speakers versus French-speakers, period.

Obviously it is not convenient, especially with Ethnics, where the division of into English-speakers and French-speakers is asymmetrical and benefits the English side immensely.
More ethnics become English-speakers than French-speakers, so when debating the issue, its always more convenient for French language militants to return to the Anglophone versus Francophone debate while ignoring those pesky ethnics who assimilate to the English side in too high numbers.

Every time you hear or see a French-language militant use the terms Anglophones, Ethnics and Francophones in relation to language, remember that they are using a device to avoid talking about the real issue, English-speakers versus French-speakers.

Instead of comparing Apples to Oranges, they attempt to pull the wool over the shoulders of Quebecers by comparing 'Granny Smith Apples' to Oranges, (omitting the rest of the apples) a rather neat trick......

In Quebec's language debate, the amount of Anglophones, Ethnics or Francophones, is in fact, irrelevant.
All that counts is the number of English-speakers versus the number French-speakers, a fact that militants try hard to repress.

And so any discussion of history, ethnicity or mother tongue is just a case of counting"Anglos with red hats."

Fans Lose Faith in the Habs

2012-01-16T00:00:00.000-05:00

A lot of players have turned their backs on the Canadiens.

The latest sad turn of events surrounding the trading of Michael Cammallerie in the middle of a game was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back, with Canadiens fans collectively throwing in the towel on the season and giving up on the team they so dearly love.

When Cammallerie called the team a bunch of 'losers' or as they say in French, 'loosers,' it set the stage for another desperate move by management dealing him off to Calgary without even bothering to poll other general mangers for a possible better offer.
It was a sad confirmation that the noble Canadiens organization had gone off the rails.

When my son, as loyal and dedicated supporter as can be, gives up on the team, it tells me that the Habs have lost the respect of its most loyal fans, a group that would forgive practically anything (even an English coach,) but not losing like this and not a sad sack management team that acts like a bunch of bumbling clowns.

I have never in my life seen fans so down on the Habs as now. It's shocking.

Talk shows, newspapers and coffee cooler conversations are largely in agreement that the Habs are toast and that it's time to blow up the team and look for a lottery pick.

Over the ~~years~~ decades, hockey and the Canadiens have given me more pleasure and enjoyment than I can describe, so I don't want to pile on and be negative, there's plenty of that going around.

I choose today to relive my top Montreal Canadiens memories;

10. Earliest Memories
Going to the old Montreal Forum on Sunday afternoon to watch the Junior Canadiens play. 50¢ got you into the door and bought a standing room place behind the barrier on an aisle that separated the arena midway up the stands. I must have been 13 or 14 years old. It was a pretty good view. I watched the likes of future Habs stars like Yvan Cournoyer, Serge Savard, Jacques Laperrière, Guy Lapointe, Jacques Lemaire start their careers. The 1969 team was perhaps the greatest junior team ever assembled, with at least a dozen future NHLers.

09. My first slap shot.
They say that Bernie 'Boom Boom' Geoffrion was the inventor of the slap shot, but the first time I saw one live at a game, was in 1964 (I think) in a match between the Habs and the Chicago Black Hawks. Stepping over the blue line, the legendary Bobby Hull 'The Golden Jet' unloaded a cannon that whizzed by the seemingly stunned Lorne 'Gumper' Worsley.
By the way, how come players in those days all had great nicknames?

08. Best game watched on TV.
In a 1993 playoff game against the L.A Kings, the Canadiens were already down in the series 2-0 and about to lose again when coach Jacques Demers asks the referee to measure Marty McSorley's hockey stick for an illegal curve. On the ensuing powerplay Eric Desjardins scored to tie it up and then scored in overtime to turn the series around.
I remember this game like it was yesterday because I was forced to watch on a tiny twelve television in a motel room in Chicoutimi, all by lonesome.
By the way, is that the recently retired Kerry Fraser doing the measuring?

7. Best playoff run 1993
The recording-breaking ten overtime wins on the road to the Stanley cup was easily the best playoff run ever.

6. My Uncles first Hockey Game
My uncle had come over from the old country for a visit and hearing that I had season tickets asked to attend a hockey game. His closest experience to hockey was soccer, which he knew pretty well and so he had a pretty easy time understanding the game on the ice, even the offsides.
What he didn't understand was the hoopla at the end of the game and why the fans weren't leaving, considering that the Canadiens had lost the game.
You see, I explained him, they were about to award the Calgary Flames the Stanley Cup.....

5. Best comeback
The 2008 Rangers game where the Canadiens overcame a 5-0 lead. Watch highlights on YouTube

Ken Dryden's legendary pose

4. All time Favorites players
Most gentlemanly player - Jean Beliveau, plus he was my favorite captain.
Best fighting matchup - John Fergusan versus Toronto's Eddie Shack
Best nickname- Yvan Cournoyer -"The Roadrunner'
Most exciting player- Guy Lafleur
Favorite goalie- Gump Worsley (style wise- the Tim Thomas of his day)
Favorite tough guy- Chris 'Knuckles' Nilan- Worst enforcer- Georges Laraque.
Favorite coach- Scotty Bowman
Best play-by-play broadcast team- Danny Gallivan and Dick Irvin. Worst-Bob Cole plus anyone
Best French announcer- René Lecavalier
Best Brother team- Frank and Pete Mahovolich (I was too young to recall the 'Rocket' Richard, but I do remember his younger brother, Henri, the 'Pocket Rocket')
Favorite quirks -Serge Savard's 'Spinerama' move. J.C Tremblay's lobs from center ice that bounced three feet in front of the goalie, scaring the crap out of them and actually scoring a couple of times.

03 Biggest disappointment
The 1967 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs in the Stanley Cup final. The Canadiens were a better team and favored (at least in Montreal.)

03. Best Hockey food
The everlasting Forum hotdog (even in the Bell Centre), perfectly cooked with a grilled bun, with a slap of mustard.
Cheap & simple perfection. Still love it.

02. Most drama
Patrick Roy telling general manger Ronald Cory that he'd played his last game in Montreal after being pulled by Mario Tremblay after a humiliating performance,

01.Greatest Habs memory
This is a no-brainer. It was the seventh game semi-final against the Bruins in the old Forum in 1979 overtime. Trailing by two goals in the third period, the Canadians mounted a comeback and when the Bruins took a too-many men penalty, Don Cherry jumped up on the bench and mocked the crowd, intimating that it is they that influenced the referee. That sequence is memorialized each week on Coach's Corner.
After Lafleur sent the game into overtime, late in the game with a blistering slapshot from just inside the blue line, Yvan Lambert scored the winner in overtime, eliminating the Bruins. It was the most dramatic game I ever witnessed.
I met Lambert twenty years later and kidded him that he had kicked the puck in the net. (I swear he did, I had a pretty good view) and he got furious at the accusation. I met him again last year in the old-timers VIP lounge in the Bell Centre when I was talking with Jean Perron and he interrupted our conversation to remind me once again that he didn't kick the puck in the net. Ha, I guess he's still sensitive about it!

Well I feel better just thinking about all those Habs memories and I bet you've got some fond memories of your own as well.
Let's hear it in the comment section, What is your GREATEST Habs memory!

At any rate, having the Habs perform so poorly this year really sucks.
Its a bit depressing in the frigid dog days of January, looking on at even less hospitable February, where all we sports fans want nothing more than to hunker down in front of the TV set in anticipation of another Habs win (0r at least a competitive game) with hockey players who we can be proud to cheer for.

Alas it is not to be....

Maybe next year......

By the way, if I'm wrong on some facts or figures, so be it. I wrote all this from memory, so gimme a break......

Sunday Housekeeping Again

2012-01-15T13:30:00.000-05:00

Dear Readers,

I want to take a moment to discuss the new threaded Comments Section, which when sprung upon me and you without warning by BLOGGER, seemed like a great addition.
Perhaps it is, but to be honest, I'm having a hard time getting used to it.

I've tried to help by installing a 'Recent comment list' in the right margin of the Blog and I hope it helps until we all get used to the new system, which I'm sure we will.

The first effect of the change is that we're likely to see more comments as readers reply individually to each comment instead of making batch replies.

So be it.
I am unable to change threaded comments, even if I wanted to, the option not afforded to EDITORS by the ubiquitous BLOGGER.

At any rate, I'm glad to report that this week our blog saw over 15,000 page views, a new record. I will always refer to NDOA as 'our' blog, because reader comments are as, or more important than my contribution.

Fridays post received over 160 comments and over 12,000 words in response.
I'm very pleased that I've provided a forum for discussions that are sorely lacking by the politically correct English media.

As for TROLLS.
Bless you all, you're part of the debate.
I won't restrict access, as I've said before. I will not become a censurer, unless you cross a line.
Please try to be droll or sarcastic in your denunciations. I do so enjoy a witty or sarcastic put down, even directed at myself!

I would also ask Trolls to adopt a screen name, it won't kill you or affect your anonymity. It will allow others reply directly.

As for comments that are suppressed, I'll repeat my policy;
Anything overtly racist or insulting, without any redeeming value will be axed.
Mindless quotes from public personalities- Karl Marx, Pierre Falardeau, Rene Levesque et als, meant to be 'in your face' insults, won't be tolerated.

Thank you all for your contributions!

French Versus English Volume 43

2012-01-13T00:00:00.000-05:00

Hilarious language video goes viral

Link to see video

On Wednesday I wrote that the demonstration in front of the Bell Centre by French language militants, protesting the hiring of a unilingual anglophone as coach of the Montreal Canadiens, would probably result in many free agents striking Montreal from the list of possibilities.
There is however another negative development, which I could not have predicted.
It's a hilarious video, a send up of demonstrators that is all the rage on YouTube.
When I first posted the video, there were less than 400 clicks, but since then, it has gone viral.

At the time of writing this post, there have been over 70,000 views.
Now I know that humor transcends the language barrier with great difficulty and many Francophones, even bilingual ones will have trouble 'getting' the video.
Trust me when I say that the video is extremely insulting and portrays the demonstrators as hopelessly sad ideologues.
The seriousness of those interviewed belied the fact that they were being mocked rather shamefully by Abdul, who is admittedly quite the deadpan comedian.

What kind of impact will the video have?

Nothing flattering, that's for damn sure. Think back to "Star Wars Kid'

The video just may be the worst nightmare possible for French language militants, becoming a meme, portraying them as buffoons across the Internet.

Regulator worried about companies avoiding public stock offerings in Quebec

The AMF, Quebec's regulatory agency for stock markets, brokers, etc. has publicly noted that some companies having their headquarters outside Quebec avoid making a public offering in the province, because of Bill 101.

"As stipulated by the law, companies are required to write their prospectus in French. The prospectus is a document to be published by any company planning to raise funds on financial markets.
According to the AMF, nearly 54% of companies avoid public offerings in Quebec due to language requirements imposed on them.
To justify their decision not to raise funds from Québec investors, the businesses claimed it is a question of costs related to the translation of texts.

"Companies are saying, 'We'll go somewhere else to raise money and we will exclude Quebec from our efforts.' So it's a situation, in fact, that is a concern to us and something on which we will have to consider, "said Sylvain Théberge, spokesman for the AMF. Link{Fr}

Quebec workplaces least diversive
"...Seventy-three per cent of Canadians describe their workplace or school as diverse, compared to 70 per cent of Americans, 68 per cent of Britons and 67 per cent of French respondents.
Sixty per cent of Quebecers work in a multicultural environment, the lowest proportion of any province.
Fewer Quebecers work and study in multicultural environments because most of the province’s immigrants are concentrated in Montreal, and because the city attracts fewer immigrants than Toronto or Vancouver, Jedwab said. Also, Quebec has a lower proportion of cultural minorities in government jobs than other provinces, he said.Fifty-seven per cent of francophones in Canada describe their workplace as diverse, compared to 74 per cent of anglophones and 83 per cent of people who speak a language other than English or French.." Link

Does Premier Charest want a Francophone coach for the future NHL team in Quebec?
The headline in La Presse announced that the Premier of Quebec wants a francophone as a coach of the future Quebec city franchise;
"Charest favorable à un entraîneur francophone pour les Nordiques" Link{Fr}
but the headline in English media said something a little different;

Future Quebec City NHL coach must speak French: Premier Charest Link

The difference in the above two headlines isn't just splitting hairs, one headline indicates that the Premier wants a French coach, the other says that he wants a French-speaking coach. The discrepancy is not lost on we English who are interested to know if a French-speaking anglo is acceptable or not.

Over the course of the Cunneyworth debate of late, most of the language militants who complained publicly over the issue, made sure to use the term 'unilingual anglophone' when describing the issue. But every now and then they forget the word 'unlingual and complained about an 'anglophone' as coach of the team. Freudian Slip?
I think so.
Under all of this pseudo talk of unilingualism, there lies an undertone of racism, where the idea of an anglo running the team is offensive, bilingual or not.
So what exactly did Premier Charest say, Francophone or bilingual?
Actually both...
In the article, the Premier told reporters that a future coach of the Nordiques would have to speak French 'as a minimum,' but later on, mentioned in joking that if ever the Nordiques couldn't find a qualified Francophone, they could hire Quebec City mayor Regis Lebaume. Link{Fr}

More English schools closing

"Things might be looking up for several schools at the English Montreal School Board on the cusp of a crucial vote on school closings.

In a surprise move on Monday, the EMSB announced that its long-range planning committee now recommends closing three schools instead of six. The committee has also backed off several proposals to relocate schools and programs.

No final decisions have been made yet. Commissioners will vote on the proposals on Wednesday."

Montreal Gazette Alternate Link

Quebec Unemployment numbers explode
For over two years Quebec nationalists have been crowing that the unemployment rate in Quebec was lower than in Ontario, something that rarely happened before.
Of course it was only a matter of time before Ontario pulled itself out of the recession and restored itself to more traditional numbers After a disastrous month of job losses Quebec's unemployment rate ballooned to 8.7% as opposed to Ontario's number which declined to 7.7%;

"You never have to look far to count the ways in which Quebec breaks with the rest of the country.

Quebecers watch more television than Canadians in any other province, due to a thriving French-language broadcasting industry that regularly draws more than a million viewers for its top shows. They’re the least-stressed, play hooky from work the most, and traditionally have the lowest rate of home ownership.

But Statistics Canada's numbers released Friday show Quebec is also splitting from other provinces on job creation, registering another employment decline in December while the rest of the country was either up or flat. Quebec’s jobless rate stands at 8.7%, higher than that of the United States."LINK

A call for a French Archdiocese in Ottawa.
Citing the example of French Catholic school boards and French secular school boards which were created in the late eighties to better serve the Francophone community, particularly in the Ottawa area, an opinion piece in Le Devoir by Pierre Allard is calling fro the Catholic church to split the Archdiocese of Ottawa along linguistic lines.

"Of the estimated 400,000 faithful of the Archdiocese of Ottawa...some 40% are francophone, with the majority English. In a context where the religious institution remains an important factor for the Franco-Ontarian minority who built the parishes and churches in their own image, ever since the nineteenth century, is it not time to question the linguistic structure of the church and give back to the French, collectively, the direction of their parishes? Is it not time to split Dioceses along language lines? Why not?" LINK

Anglos outlive Francophones.
A report in the European Journal of Epidemiology indicates that the life expectancy for Quebec Francophone men is 76.5 years, which is 2.3 years less than for Anglophone men. For Francophone women life expectancy is 81.8, or 1.4 years less than their Anglophone counterparts. The difference is particularly marked among men in major cities other than Montreal, like Quebec City, Sherbrooke and Gatineau, where the difference is 5.1 years.
Higher smoking rates and higher alcohol consumption among francophones are signaled as the major contributing factor to the gap, Link

Mohawk Doctor in peril of losing her license over French

A doctor practicing in the Montreal suburb of Chateauguay, (which has a large Anglo community) is in jeopardy of losing her license because she cannot pass a French exam.
Brought up in the nearby native reserve of Kahnawake Mohawk territory, Dr. Ojistoh Horn is the first female Mohawk medical doctor from Kahnawake. She is the daughter of Kahentinetha Horn, an important native activist.

"Roxann Karonhiarok selected (for an Indigenous person award..ed.) Kahentinetha Horn, publisher of Mohawk Nation News, and her daughter, Dr. Ojistoh Horn, the first female Mohawk medical doctor from Kahnawake. Roxann described the mother and daughter as, “An amazing duet and strong women."
Roxann said, “I nominated Ojistoh because she delivers our babies. Being a matrilineal society she is responsible and takes a hands on role in the delivery of the mothers of our nation." She added, "That woman does not sleep. She does house calls and even looks after people during family events on her time off! I love that beautiful woman. She’s an inspiration and deserves it!” LINK

Unfortunately she apparently doesn't have a satisfactory command of French, according to the licensing board which has as a requirement that every doctor be capable of passing a French exam.

Readers should understand that Native bands in Quebec are closely associated with either the English language or the French language, but not both. Mohawks, along with the Cree in the North, speak English along with their native tongue. French on these 'English-leaning' reserves is practically non-existent.
Dr. Horn is to be given one last chance to pass the French test, before being suspended. Link{Fr}

Radio personality complains that restaurant brawlers spoke too much English.

For those of you who haven't seen the video of a New Year's eve brawl in a Montreal Chinatown eatery, the New Dynasty, watch it here;

But as amusing as it is, it was a brawl between two English parties, one Asian and the other Black, so why does this story make the French versus English page?

It's hard to believe but blowhard radio whiner Benoît Dutrizac, actually complained on the radio that the two fighting groups spoke only English.
I'm not making this up.
While interviewing fellow language supremacist Mario Beaulieu on his radio show, he decried the fact that everyone involved spoke English, as well as the waiters.
Why?
Dunno....perhaps if one group spoke French, he'd of had someone to stick up for.
Listen here, the fun starts at 2:50 LINK{Fr}

Controversial mayor

For Huntington mayor Stéphane Gendron it's been quite a turbulent couple of days. First he was assailed by Jewish groups for remarks he made on his television news magazine where;

"On the December 27 edition of his Face a Face talk show on the V Television Network, he called Israel an "apartheid state" that "does not deserve to exist." Link

Suffice to say that Mr. Gendron is not a fan of the Jewish state. He also is not afraid to take on other sacred cows and has in the past criticized the Office québécois de la langue française, and openly mocked Mario Beaulieu in an interview, calling him intolerant.
Perhaps it was to deflect the overwhelming condemnation over his Israel remarks, Gendron again lashed out at the OQLF, telling them that his Eastern township town (40% English) would not comply with regulations making French predominate. Link{Fr}

First baby of 2012
Once again Quebec's first baby of 2011 left French language militants wringing their hands.
Tyler Stephen Wilson was the first baby born in Quebec in 2012, at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, weighing 3 kilograms.

Mom Teresa Howick Wilson and husband are ecstatic.

Here's a picture of the happy English couple and readers can draw conclusions as to why the Jacques Noels of the province were none to pleased.

*************************

FINALLY LET'S FINISH WITH SOMETHING A LITTLE MORE POSITIVE!
If you've got some time this weekend, watch this food/travel show which will illustrate why we all love to live in Canada's most imperfect, yet most exciting big city...

"Without Montreal, Canada would be hopeless, it's where the cool kids hang ....-Chef Anthony Bordain;

Threaded Comments...Enfin!

2012-01-11T23:40:00.001-05:00

Threaded comments.....Yes, readers, it was as big a surprise to me, as to you!
Blogger finally sprung a useful update.
Friends, I think it's a great improvement.

Tomorrow, F versus E #43....don't miss it, it's a good'un...

Media Responsible for Raising Language Tension

2012-01-11T00:00:00.000-05:00

At first, I was going to call this blog piece "Media Complicit in Raising Language Tension" but, in the end, changed the word 'Complicit' to 'Responsible' because upon reflection, conclude that in fact, it's the media, more than the small cadre of language militants, that is responsible for much of the language tension in Quebec.

There's no doubt that the media plays a pivotal role in shaping our view of the world, by the very act of choosing what stories we will or will not be exposed to, as well as the amount of coverage afforded to these stories.

As way of illustration let us consider a mythical story about a poor family who has been ripped off by a scam artist and finds itself destitute at Christmastime.
Invariably, after the story is aired by the media, the public reacts and money pours in to help the family out, while all the other people with hard-luck stories, just as worthy, are ignored because of a lack of media coverage.

Media shapes our opinion and forges our reactions by what they choose to report. It's as simple as that.

In science, the term observer effect means that the act of observing will influence the phenomenon being observed. Nothing can be truer than this when it comes to the reporting of news or political events.

As we all know last Saturday, French language militants held a demonstration at the Bell Centre to protest the hiring of an English coach by the Montreal Canadiens.

How do we all know this?
Because the story blanketed the television and radio airwaves for at least a week before the demonstration and for days afterward.
Before the event, Mario Beaulieu, the chief organizer was afforded dozens of opportunities to plug his demonstration through a series of interviews on television and radio in which he repeated his message, that the hiring of a unilingual anglophone coach by the Canadiens was, as he termed it,- "la goutte d'eau qui fait déborder le vase," the English equivalent being "The straw that broke the camel's back."
As the week preceding the demonstration wore on and Beaulieu continued repeating his spiel like a yoga master repeating his mantra, some reporters picked up on his tag line and started using it themselves to describe the Cunneyworth situation, an egregious act of journalistic un-professionalism.

The media reported the number of demonstrators taking part in the event at between 200 and 500 people, but the most accurate count was made by a Centre Bell security guard who actually counted each person involved and reached the unimpressive total of between 100 and 150.

100-150 people... That's it.

Over a month ago I made mention of a demonstration of over 250 people in a small Laurention community who gathered to complain about, of all things, the closure of the town's last ATM machine.
On Sunday last, over 450 people attended the funeral of a six-year old Maxime Dion, who died tragically in a river drowning.
In November hundreds of parents and students marched on the EMSB demanding that a school be saved.
The media reported all these stories, but the coverage devoted to those stories paled in comparison to the media resources devoted to the demonstration at the Bell Centre of a paltry 150 French language militants.

If Justin Bieber held an autograph session in front of the Bell Centre, I daresay 5,000 screaming fans would have showed up and the media would have devoted about 100th of the coverage that the Cunneyworth demonstration merited.

100-150 people. That's it..

Aside from the over-reported amount of demonstrators, the media also failed to tell the truth about the protest, likely because it did not fit in with the narrative that they had been selling all week.

It was plainly evident that the protesters were actually hard-core anglophobes whose signs and placards betrayed their utter hatred of all things English. Those who came were French-language fanatics, not fans who gave a hoot about the Canadiens coach.

Real Canadiens fans arriving to the game largely ignored the demonstrators and those interviewed showed a marked indifference, more excited to get into the Bell Centre than to waste time with demonstrators.
The promised action whereby fans within the Bell Centre, would wave small Quebec flags (which were distributed by the demonstrators) as some sort of protest, fizzled badly, as well. The flags were almost invisible during the game.

As a commenter mentioned on 25Stanley.com:

"100 personnes ? Pfff! C'est 4x moins que le Fan Club de Petteri Nokelainen. Pas trop grave."

Ha! I don't even have to translate that !!!

In a city of 2 million, all that could be mustered was 150 persons, which leads me to conclude that the language file is not as important as Mr. Beaulieu and this radical cohorts would have us believe. The Montreal Chapter of the SSJB has more than 3,000 members, and so it seems that Mr. Beaulieu couldn't even turn out his own hardliners.

If people were as concerned over the 'so-called' decline of the French language, as Mr. Beaulieu tells us they are, there'd be thousands upon thousands drawn to these types of demonstrations, but none of these 'language' demonstrations ever garner more than two hundred people, regardless of the media hype before and after.
With the widespread publicity that Beaulieu benefited from in the run-up to the demonstration, one would conclude that the 150 demonstrators represented a complete catastrophe, but you'd never hear that from the media!

Nowhere and never is the paltry size of these protests ever considered or the relevance thereof debated by journalists. Never.
Nobody ever calls Mario Beaulieu out on the utter failure of his movement to fire popular support.

Without the overblown support of a media driven by its own agenda, the movement would remain a coffeehouse phenomenon.
To be fair, let us remember the dismal turnout to the anti-Bill 101 protests as well.

And so I have to conclude that the language debate is a lot less important to Quebecers than we are led to believe and that the media is responsible for over-hyping these supposed tensions.

If the media afforded the language issue the weight the story actually merits, we'd hardly ever hear of it. But because it is an attractive issue, especially on 24 news channels that have hours and hours of programming to fill, we are subject to an overdose of language nonsense.

Quebecers, on both sides of the debate, by their non-action, testify to the weight they place on language issues.

Or can it be that Quebecers are just lazy and not interested in demonstrating, even on issues which are near and dear to their heart?
I don't think so, remember that demonstration in favour of a NHL team for Quebec City.
50,000 people showed up for it.....yep....50,000.

It isn't laziness that leads Quebecers to skip language demonstrations, it's just a lack of interest, the issue being far less pressing and urgent than portrayed.

It seems that English, French and Ethnics have pretty much made up their mind to accept the language status quo, as is. While none are perfectly happy, few except radicals seem to be overly upset, as we can conclude by the pitiful turnout for all language demonstrations, both English and French.

Perhaps this theory will upset some readers on both sides of the language debate, but it iss worth discussing.......

Here's the only piece that made any sense of the situation. The link to it was posted in the Comments section on Monday.

In this YouTube piece, a bilingual Anglo, absolutely slays in this sarcastic take on the demonstration.

It's half English/half French (like Montreal) so watch it even if you don't speak French, but unfortunately, you'll miss a lot, he is devastating in French!

&lt;p&gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&lt;/p&gt;

And so readers finally, a brave soul who is ready to tell us that this emperor hath no clothes, that the whole thing is a sad farce, a movement which has no popular support.

BTW, I think this guy is hilarious....I hope he posts more on the language situation, we all could use a good laugh, otherwise we'll just cry.....

Off subject but, here's another funny video by Abdul Butt on Occupy Montreal. ENJOY!

Language Flap Damages Canadiens Brand

2012-01-09T00:00:00.000-05:00

When we were all little kids, one of the first lessons we were taught is that we can't always get what we want.

For me, that realization came early.
I remember as a toddler seated in the grocery cart, being pushed up and down the food-laden aisles in Steinberg's grocery store and pointing to all the things on the shelf that I wanted.
My demands, punctuated by tantrums and fits of tears, were met by a steely "NO" from my mother, who remained stoically unimpressed by my animated exhortations.
She didn't even explain why not. It was just the way it was.

As we grow older and mature, we learn that there will always be things that we want, which we cannot have, obstacles and circumstances that we cannot overcome or change, and that we must accept these things as they are, or else be doomed to grow up bitter, frustrated and unfulfilled.

As they say in Alcoholics Anonymous,

...Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change...

There are unfortunately, too many language militants in Quebec who never understood this principle and have never come to accept the world-wide dominance of English, resulting in growing up, a frustrated and bitter bunch, doomed to see their dreams of glory, dashed over and over and over again.

And so they never accept the fact that there is nothing they can do to change the enduring fact that English dominates and that Quebec will never be immune from that effect. Never.

French language supremacists, continue to believe in a fantasy where everything and everybody cross an imaginary language curtain at the Quebec border, where all is magically transformed from English into French and from French to English upon leaving.

It is a childlike fantasy, as underscored by journalist Jean-François Lisée, who told a television audience recently that a Quebec based company, operating a powerful international conglomerate which uses English as the common corporate language around the world, can successfully manage its empire operating its head-office in French.

It's wishful thinking that plays to the innocent and naive, an unreality where French language militants believe that others will act not in their own selfish interests, but rather for the betterment of Quebec and the preservation and promotion of the French language.

They naively believe that legislation can cure the language defect, as if a law ordaining that summer be extended by three months can actually have an effect, based solely on the force of legislative will.

When faced with the cruel reality that such is not the case, there is nothing left but bitterness and rancour.

So let me pop another bubble.
Not even sovereignty can turn an English NHL team into a French or even bilingual NHL team, it just isn't in the cards.
If the Nordiques return to Quebec City and hire a French general manger and coach, the team will still operate in English, on the ice and in the dressing room, the use of French, an illusory veneer.

The other reality that sports writers and fans fail to understand or accept, is that hockey players have no interest in learning French whatsoever and few or none who come to play for the Canadiens will ever bother with anything more than a 'Merci-Bonjour.'
For most of these players, not from the highly educated class, its a struggle to learn English, but do so because it is critical to their success.

The idea that players toiling for the Canadiens will learn a third language, a language that they will almost never use, is nothing more than a fanciful pipe dream.

Rejean Tremblay the insufferable Francophone sportswriter, who brings language into practically every sports column he writes, is the poster boy of the indignant whiners, unable to understand or accept that for hockey players, learning French or becoming part of the French community is a non-starter.

Mr. Tremblay has in the past castigated Saku Koivu for having the audacity to remain captain of the beloved Habs for ten years without learning French as well as berating Andre Markov for his lack of French, on the occasion of him earning Canadian citizenship.

Each time I pass the Saku Koivu Cancer Centre in the Montreal General Hospital, I am reminded that the blowhard Tremblay has branded Koivu disrespectful and an enemy of the Quebec people.

So why the ferocious reaction by French language militants to an English coach or two unilingual bosses at the Caisse de dépôt or one English boss at the National Bank?
The reaction seems a little disproportionate.
Why so much rage and bluster?

It is in fact, a bigger, much bigger deal than we Anglos can fathom.

The existence of these unilinguals in Quebec puts paid to the myth pedalled by language supremacists that Quebecers need not learn English because the language curtain surrounding Quebec is inviolable.

It breaks the promise that everything entering Quebec will be translated and that every artist, athlete, boss or politician who sets foot in Quebec will learn and use French to communicate with employees, fans, friends and colleagues.

It makes mockery of the theory that Quebecers need not learn a second language because hockey players will learn a third.
And most importantly, it destroys the French language supremacy movement's most hallowed tenet, that Quebec can exist without English.

It is a big deal...a very big deal.

It is why little language issues are blown out of proportion.

Like in North Korea, Quebecers are indoctrinated with a fantastical bill of goods. They are told that English is irrelevant and unnecessary, while the rest of the world believes the opposite.
Like in North Korea, any real or perceived breech of this fantasy is met by a ferocious reaction by language protectors, doing their darnedest to hide the truth by obliterating reality.

And so Quebec has it's very own twenty-first version of the Bamboo or Iron Curtain, where language militants carefully attempt to stage society in their own Utopian image, to hide the reality of the outside world.

Zealots like Mario Beaulieu and Jean-François Lisée continue to discourage Quebecers from learning English by promising that they need not do so because the world will speak French to Quebec.
In this context, it is easy to understand the exaggerated reaction to English names on stores, English signs and yes, even English Quebecers, themselves.
Our very presence is a disturbance.

As long as we Anglos and Ethnics exist in Montreal, living our lives in English or bilingually, Quebecers are exposed to an alternate view of the universe, something French language militants cannot abide by.
The venomous attacks on bilingualism, remain a required element, if the myth of Quebec as a French-only society is to be preserved.
Let us remember, it is not only we Anglos and Ethnics who are targeted, but those francophones who refuse to drink the Cool-Aid and pursue bilingualism on there own. In the eyes of language supremacists, they are the the ultimate betrayers.

But there are devastating consequences to this manic pursuit of a non-existent French Shangrila.

Failure to accept the linguistic reality of the world, is a cancerous tumor on Quebec society, sapping the province of its strength and vitality.

The rally on Saturday night in front of the Bell Centre by about 150 French language militants was just another desperate attempt to alter realty.

Beaulieu framed by "Down with Molson the Traitor" sign

RACISTS MESSAGES OF HATE
The mantra of the militant leaders that their movement is not about the hatred of English, but rather about the promotion of French, is a lie that signs like these ones attest to.
What if Albertans had a demonstration and wore T-Shirts saying that there were too many Francophones in the federal government?
I'm sure Mr, Beaulieu and company would be screaming 'Francophobia' at the top of their lungs!

So what can we expect as a result of this demonstration and the messages of hate towards English in the Montreal Canadiens organization?

Loudly demanding that the Montreal Canadiens tilt towards French, has no other effect but to thin the ranks of those willing to try a career in Montreal, especially those elusive free agents who are presented with 29 less bothersome destinations to choose from.

"Mr. Molson-There's too many Anglos on your Boat"

(By the way, this realty of talented people refusing to come to Quebec over language is repeated in industry after industry)

And so the Montreal Canadiens brand will forever be diminished by the language brouhaha surrounding Randy Cunneyworth's unilingualism.
When he is ultimately sacrificed on the language altar, it will serve as a cautionary lesson to the entire NHL community.

Skip Montreal, it is a hateful place where English people who don't speak French are unwelcome.

If nice guys like Cunneyworth, Koivu and Markov are to be vilified ...well count me out.

Call it the 'Lindros Effect' or whatever.
Agents of star players will cross off Montreal from the list of acceptable destinations and so the Canadiens will choose from has-beens, also-rans and aging veterans closing out their career. Its already happened, but no one will admit it.

"Montreal Is Under English Occupation"

This coupled with the strange fact that francophone stars eschew Montreal as well, ensures that the team is on a downward spiral, sucked into a linguistic black hole, never to escape.

There is a price to pay for the foolish preoccupation of battling a language enemy that cannot be defeated.
Quebecers to this day have never realized what this preoccupation has cost them, shielded by successive governments which immunized them from the consequences through deficit spending and indulgent transfer payments from English Canada.

Quebec is on its way to a rendezvous with destiny.

When the province hits its fast approaching debt ceiling and the Rest of Canada decides to no longer support the current equalization program, it will be time to face the music.

Sadly, that swan song will be English.

***************************************************************

POSTCRIPT;

Having just completed the last episode of HBO's stunning hockey documentary, 24/7-Road to the Winter Classic, I am struck by the level of skill, toughness and dedication that professional hockey demands from every single one of its participants, on every single level.

Unsuitable for the Canadiens?

Thinking back to the nonsense published by Quebec language supremacists that somehow francophones are discriminated against in the NHL and that teams deliberately play or draft lesser-talented non-Francophone players is so ridiculous that it remains nothing less than a sad fantasy woven by the self-deluded, tilting at windmills.

Imagine Flyers general manager Paul Holgren telling coach Peter Laviolette that a certain talented French player won't be playing in the Winter Classic because it's important that the English language be preserved as the dominant force in the NHL.
I daresay that the Flyers would have played a unilingual-Swahili-speaking-Black-half-Jewish/Muslim-dwarf, if they thought it could help them beat the Rangers.

Watching the virtuosic performances of both Peter Laviolette and John Tortorella behind the bench and in the dressing room, was nothing short of enthralling.
It was to say the least, an exceptional experience, one that made me feel as if I was spying secretly through a keyhole, a rare opportunity to observe two maestros at work in their natural element, akin to a National Geographic special observing wild animals in their natural habitat.

Masterfully combining toughness, sympathy with single-mindedness, both these gentlemen showed viewers what a top-notch NHL coach is made of.
It's hard to comprehend that should either of these men become available to coach the Canadiens, he would be automatically rejected over language. Bah!!!

One last thought...
Both Laviolette and Torts were pretty consistent, carrying the passion and animation displayed inside the dressing room out to behind the bench. What you saw inside you saw on the outside.

It got me thinking about that the deadpan expressionless, demeanour of the recently fired coach of the Canadiens, Jacques Martin.
If what we saw behind the bench, that aloof, dispassionate and unemotional attitude, carried into the Habs dressing room, well.....it was high time he was fired.

It takes a hell of a lot of talent to be an elite NHL coach and when French language supremacists tell us that they are a dime a dozen, I'll just beg to differ.

At any rate, it's like saying that rejecting a Placido Domingo, Yehudi Menuhin, Stephen Hawking or Lady GaGa over their lack of French is just fine, because there are plenty of capable Quebec francophones that can replace them.

Sorry....t'aint so!

Read:

How to Make the Monteal Canadiens More French (Humor)

Read:
Heaven Help the Montreal Canadiens!

French Versus English Volume 42

2012-01-06T00:00:00.003-05:00

French militants to demonstrate at Bell Centre before game.

"The grumbling continued Thursday over the Montreal Canadiens’ appointment of a unilingual anglophone coach.
The latest to denounce coach Randy Cunneyworth was the Mouvement Quebec Francais (Movement of French Montreal), which issued a statement that a peaceful demonstration would be held before the Canadiens’ next home game, Jan. 7." Link

Montreal Bars advertize New Years party in English only

An article in Le Journal de Montreal took several Montreal bars to task for advertising their New Years Eve bash in English only.

The newspaper produced a list of fifteen bars that had posted English-only advertisements touting the celebrations.

When questioned by reporters about the slight, bar owners insisted that they were just targeting tourists who made up over 90% of their clientele. Hmm.....

Bars have always been 'selective' on who they let in, using doormen to cull potential clients and admit those that fit in with the 'image' that the club wants to project.

Although never admitted, most clubs attempt to control what type of clients enter their premises based on dress, sexual preference, colour, race and now apparently language.

While nobody may be refused or admitted exclusively on the basis of these criteria, it happens every day and patrons understand where and where they are welcome.

And so it seems, that these bars are promoting an 'English-only' affair, something that upsets French-language militants.

The ever-indignant Mario Beaulieu misses the point entirely, thinking that the bars are trying to attract francophones by using 'cool' English.

"It's deplorable. I don't know why, but it seems that people think they must speak English to appear cool with younger people," he denounced, "It's something to be changed. Otherwise, French will be in real danger in Montreal."

Mr. Beaulieu fails to understand the message being sent.

It's an English only party, so don't expect Loco Locass to be played or French commentary from the deejay. Link{Fr}

Bombardier union frightened by language attacks on company

I guess someone is worried about attacks over English at Bombardier and the spectre of losing jobs. The union representing employees is painfully aware of the international nature of the company and the tenuous grasp each division holds on its jobs. It moved the union to make an official statement supporting the company;

"The progress of French at Bombardier Aerospace may be imperfect, but it has grown steadily over the last two years, said union representative , Eric Rancourt..."We cannot be said to be in favour of the agreement (a waiver to allow English..ed.,)but we are far from being against it, because that provision affects new development programs at Bombardier like the CSeries that create jobs," he said.. Link{Fr}

Wow.... Talk about doublespeak!

Health agency to stop serving immigrants in French

"Quebec's medicare agency is taking steps to reduce the dependence of immigrants on the English language, according to The Canadian Press.
Starting January 30, 2012, the Regie de l'assurance maladie du Quebec (RAMQ) will impose a one-year limit on communicating in English with immigrants, even if their knowledge of the French language is weak." Read the rest of the story

Quotes of the week

Anne Lagacé Dowson, the insufferable leftist bore (recently sacked from the radio station CJAD) told a French language television panel that;
"Bill 101 saved Canada"
When Tasha Kheiriddin complained that many Canadians object that unilingual anglophones be excluded from consideration for top governments jobs, the host of the debate, Céline Galipeau told her that;
"There are plenty of bilingual francophones who can replace these people." Link{Fr}

English bonus legal

"After offering a bilingual bonus to 40 of its employees, the City of Sherbrooke was the target of a lot criticism from certain politicians and organizations fighting for the protection of the French language. Three months later after the story broke, the Office québécois de la langue française(OQLF) confirms that the premium remains perfectly legal.... "From a legal point of view, it is not forbidden," ruled a spokesman for the OQLF, Martin Bergeron." Link{Fr}

This ruling has infuriated the French supremacist group Impératif français which in a news release fumed that;
"Quebec is a nation occupied by the English language. Even the Office québécois de la langue française contributes to this influence!...
Although it was created to defend and promote French in Quebec, this agency has declared "legal" the discriminatory practice of offering a bonus to some employees who speak English in Quebec" Link{Fr}

Phoenix versus Phénix
The continuing controversy over the name selected for a new QMJLH hockey franchise in Sherbrooke continues to brew.
But an article concerning this debate intrigued me for another reason, the last paragraph particularly where the journalist claimed that there is opposition to an Anglophone head coach.
"By appointing an English coach,the Phoenix organization has become the target of much criticism. Fans are demanding a francophone coach and propose the appointment of Patrick Roy, who is willing to listen to an offer by the Phoenix, even if he is already the head coach and general manager of the Quebec Remparts.

I guess it doesn't matter if the Anglophone speaks French or not . The fact that the fans demand a francophone, no matter what, doesn't seem to be that big a deal to the the journalist.....Hmmm.... Link{Fr}

Too much English at Montreal city hall
Vision Montreal councillor Elsie Lefebvre complained in public that French was being disrespected in City Hall by the overuse of English.
The mayor, Gerald Tremblay dismissed her claims saying that such ideas were in her DNA, being a former Peekist.

"Tremblay's remarks follow Lefebvre's decision to rise on a question of privilege during a meeting of city council on Tuesday to contend her rights as a city councillor were being belittled "because this municipal council becomes more anglicized month after month, week after week." LINK{Fr}

This follows a complaint that a bilingual flyer was sent to homes around the Park avenue area encouraging people to shop on the street during a bothersome construction project.
The OQLF deemed the flyer legal, but chastised the city for setting a bad example. Link{Fr}

Vigel.net continues strong support for murdering Assad's Syrian regime
In its pursuit of a policy of opposing everything that Canada, America or Israel supports, regardless of any moral imperative, vigel.net continues publishing stories favourable to the Syrian regime.
In a series of articles, some of them outright fantasy, the radical website attempts to explain why killing unarmed civilian protesters is legitimate.

vigile.net touts Assad

"As you recall, the decision to attack Syria was taken at a meeting at Camp David, September 15, 2001, just after the attacks in New York and Washington....

....President Bashar al-Assad is not like his father. He is not an autocrat. He governs with a team. The strategy of his government is on the one hand to preserve civil peace and deal with attempts to destabilize and sectarian division, and also to strengthen its alliances, especially with Iran, Russia and China." Link{Fr}

Why the urgency by the international community, to announce new sanctions without being concerned about who are the real perpetrators of this violence. We know that states, grouped behind the United States, decided from the very beginning of this story, that President Bashar Al-Assad is solely responsible. Witnesses and analysts who argue along the lines of another explanation are ignored." Link{Fr}

Also featured on the website is a video showing Assad being wildly cheered by adoring crowds. The video entitled 'Syria Loves Bashar' can be seen on vigle.net or YouTube

Two standards for bilingual websites
Le Devoir ran a story entitled "No French for Baird and his collegues" in which English ministers were called out for running English only personal websites. John Baird, Tony Clement, Jason Kenney, Joe Oliver, Jim Flaherty, Peter MacKay and Diane Finley were all mentioned in the story as the guilty parties.
The article did however mention that two ministers ran French-only websites, but this wasn't reflected in the headline and the story which highlighted the linguistic faux-pas of the Anglos only.

'Quebec Delegate General in New York communicates in English only...
(NDOA exclusive story)

While the Quebec government tut-tuts the use of English at the Caisse du Depot, its very own Director General in New York, responsible for relations with eight States across the eastern seaboard communicates with Quebeckers in English only.
John Parisella, who acts as Quebec's 'ambassador,' to the United States, has been serving in the job since September 2009. He has been writing an official blog (in English only) about his activities for almost two years. Quebecnewyorkblog.org.

Says Mr Parisella on his front page in English only;

"I  intend to use this space to keep you informed on my work and to update  you on my government’s actions in the Mid-Atlantic and beyond."

He also has a FaceBook page and Tweets regularly on behalf of the office, all in English only, as well.

In fact the Twitter account associated with the blog, @QuebecNewYork, follows 101 other Tweeters, all English, except one! (Radio Canada Info)

This from an official Quebec government representative.

'Short stuff
After a few months of operation, the Quebec based site modeled after WikiLeaks has quietly gone on hiatus. Problem- nobody sent in anything to leak ..Link{Fr}

A veteran separatist and self-proclaimed 'intellectual' Gilbert Paquette complained that his Federal MP has dared to send a bilingual pamphlet to his home.
"I hope your future mailings will respect the French fact in Quebec until such time that we can remove the control of Quebec by the Parliament of Canada." Link{Fr}

Another unilingual Anglo has been publicly outed and denounced, this time a coach for the University of Montreal football team. Link{Fr}

In a fantasy too often repeated, a letter writer in La Presse, tells readers that in business, its more important to learn Mandarin, Spanish or Portuguese than English.... Portuguese. REALLY? Link{Fr}

Blame Canadiens Language Fiasco on Geoff Molson

2012-01-04T00:00:00.000-05:00

For those of us Anglos who live in Quebec, even those stridently pro-English, the decision by the Montreal Canadiens to hire a unilingually English coach seems not only ill-conceived, but extraordinary foolhardy.

It's hard to understand the utter disconnection that exists between the management of the team and the political reality of the day.
Let us for the moment put the politics of language aside and consider that the Montreal Canadiens are a business, more importantly an entertainment business.
If I were to run an independent movie theatre in south shore Brossard (a town with many Chinese residents), I'd certainly consider bringing Chinese movies and having a staff (or some significant portion thereof) that could talk to an important part of the client base in their own language.
Same goes for a bookstore in Chicoutimi, where I'd likely concentrate on French books.
It isn't rocket science.

The most basic rules in commerce is recognizing what customers want and successfully delivering it. Companies spend billions on market research trying to figure out exactly what that is and relentlessly pursue this mission as if on a quest for the Holy Grail.
Whether or not it was the right hockey decision, let's be honest, only an idiot would hire an English unilingual head coach in today's Quebec.

Enter Geoff Molson.

When Geoff Molson bought the team and made the decision to dump the eminantly experienced Pierre Boivin as president, he took on the ultimate responsibility of top banana, a job he is clearly not up to.

It doesn't surprise me, children born of the silver spoon seldom achieve much on their own and Quebec's rich kids are no different.
There are notable exceptions, one that comes to mind is Pierre-Karl Péladeau, who after a rocky start at the helm of Quebecor has since found his rhythm and become a force to be reckoned with, a rough sort who actually has blossomed into a bigger and nastier SOB than his father.
Take that last description of PKP as a compliment.
Nobody can deny that his success in turning around the faltering dynasty that his father left him is based largely on the force of his personality, where his willingness to play rough is coupled with a keen single-mindedness and an amazing ability to manipulate.

But make no mistake, PKP is the exception.

Most children of billionaires and hundred-millionaires are not cut from the same cloth.
Most are coupon-clippers, who recognize their limitations and keep out of the public eye, content to occupy themselves with trivial pursuits while leading the life of genteel aristocrats. Most are uncomfortable dealing with the great unwashed and live in constant fear of being outed as unworthy and unsuccessful.

How do I know?
Well for many years I was the president of an important charitable foundation and as such trolled for dollars among the gazillionaire class.
Of course, most of the board of directors of foundations where I solicited donations were stuffed with a lot of these children of the rich and over the years, I grew to actually feel sorry for many of them who were bullied, belittled and marginalized by their parents and as adults grew into badly-adjusted and complexed human beings.

Many of them were in their forties and fifties, never really having done anything worth a lick in their entire lives and who resented their parents and their own wealth, but trapped by their own lack of skills.
I'm not going to mention names of those rich kids who choose wisely not to get involved in public life. They deserve their privacy.
I'm also going on record now as saying, that Geoff Molson was not one that I knew or dealt with, but alas he shows the classic signs of a rich boy underachiever.

From his less than stellar academic record, to a bunch of gimme jobs at Molson, he hasn't exactly set the world afire.
Here he is, looking like a clown, in a really bad television commercial.

This is the owner of the Canadiens?

Here's a video of him sucking up to Michel Arsenault the controversial and sometimes nasty leader of the Quebec Labour Union, the FTQ Link

Now when underachievers get their hands on the throttle of real power, the results can be disastrous as is underscored by Montreal's Bronfman family.
Like all billionaire dynastic families, succession remains problematic and hotly contested. The reigns of power of the business empire of the late Samuel Bronfman had been successfully transferred to Edgar Bronfman, who in turn, when the time came to retire, made the disastrous decision to hand his son, Edgar Bronfman Jr. the top job.
Suffice to say that the Bronfmans remain a rich family with a small fortune.
Problem is that when Edgar Jr. took over the company, they had a large fortune!

One bad decision after another saw the Bronfman fortune fritter away and today the family fortune is just a pale reminder of what it once was.
Reading the history of the collapse of the family fortune is a sad reminder that a storied family name does not a businessman make. Read Fortune's Fool

They say that most commercial airline crashes are the result of more than one error, a confluence of unlikely circumstances coupled with poor decisions. In reaction to a deteriorating and unsafe flying situation, a pilot makes a tragic miscalculation that the co-pilot does not pick up on.

It sounds like a good description of what happened to the Canadiens and their decision to hire Randy Cunneyworth.

Bad judgement times two.

Clearly both Geoff and the hapless Pierre Gauthier underestimated the public's reaction to a unilingual coach.
The decision remains stunningly stupid, because you, I and the panhandler on the street could have told them both, that hiring a unilingual Anglo wasn't the brightest idea.

You might ask how a francophone like Gauthier could be so disconnected from reality that he did not see the impending public relations disaster that was to result in his decision to hire Cunneyworth.
But Gauthier is a francophone in name only, his long career in the NHL has always been conducted in English and when he got the job with the Habs, he decided to remain in the USA by setting up his family in Burlington, Vermont, where his kids attend an alternate school. Gauthier and his anglophone family lead an alternate lifestyle and eschew the big city life in Montreal.
Unfortunately his time away and his choice to live in the USA has insulated him from the realities of Quebec, especially the explosive language issue. At any rate, how on Earth as a General Manager can he convince a free agent to move to Montreal, if he himself won't live there?

He is to say the least, the worst fit possible for Molson, who needs a francophone well-rooted in Quebec culture and an ex-member of the hockey world, either as a coach or player.

Molson's biggest failure is his inability to see Gauthier's firing of Jacques Martin for what it is, a panicked decision made in haste without a clear and cogent plan, an attempt to transfer blame for the on-ice fiasco from himself to Martin.

Jacques Martin may not have been the greatest coach, but the Canadiens problems could clearly be laid at the doorstep of Gauthier, who since taking over from Bob Gainey has made one bad personnel decision after another.

But more importantly, the person that Molson replaced, Pierre Boivin, would never have allowed what happened to happen.
Here' what he told a reporter;

"Although he believes that his team is disadvantaged by its desire to hire someone who speaks French to address the fans and media during the regular season, the businessman also believes that the Canadiens have a role to play in this regard and it is his duty to hire a local coach.

"It's almost an obligation that the next coach will be able to speak to supporters and media in their language, but we are but one team among 30 who is concerned with this and it limits us in our selection process, "
"I think our team deserves to finally have a coach of experience, we have to stop looking in junior or the AHL. We'll cross our fingers for there to be some French experience available, "he added. Link{Fr}

And there it is, as honest an assessment as can be made.

Boivin brought the right balance of business and hockey to the job. I've always admired how professional and cool he remained in a very tough job. His personal life, so full of tragedy, perhaps steeled himself from making rash decisions.

For Geoff Molson, his immediate and panicked reaction was to throw Randy Cunneyworth under the bus, promising fans that he'd be gone at the end of the year.
For Cunneyworth, it's an unfair betrayal, the same fate that befell the unfortunate Don Lever last season, sacrificed over language.
A little better planning could have avoided all this.
Canadiens are going nowhere this year and if they had to wait until the off season for a suitable candidate for coach to present itself, then that's what they should have done.

Hockey fans in Quebec are emotional but not stupid. Everybody knows that it was Gauthier that should have been fired before Martin.

Everybody it seems, except Geoff Molson.

Anglo Quiz Revisited...

2012-01-03T18:35:00.000-05:00

I hope you enjoyed the New Year's Day quiz and almost all the questions were answered correctly.

A couple of comments;

Question 4.
Name two of Montreal's most famous steak houses?
Although correctly answered I thought someone would mention 'Gibby's'

Question 12.
Name one borough that is home to a large part of Montreal's Haitian community.
Montreal North?

Question 13.
Why is there a flower stall installed on Place Jacques Cartier in Old Montreal?
This was without a doubt the toughest question.
There is a flower stall because the site was donated to the city and was to remain a public market forever. Without fresh produce being sold on the site, the property would revert to the heirs.

Question 30.
What do Morris Fish (Supreme Court Justice), Irving Layton, David Lewis (former leader of the Ndp) William Shatner and Mordechai Richler all have in common?
Yes, Baron Bing High School.

Question 35.
What two famous historical adversaries have back-to-back street named after them?

Yes, Wolfe & Montcalm Streets.

Question 53.
Where is Montreal's version of Moncton's 'Magnetic Hill?'
Surpised nobody got this. The hill is the little hump that connects Cedar avenue to Cote de Neiges. Drive to the bottom of the hill, place your gear in neutral and your car will seemingly drive back up the hill.

By the way, Montreal police are used to people stopping their cars and giving the hill a whirl. If there's no traffic or its late a night , they won't complain.

Question 57.
What famous Montreal fast-food joint will celebrate it's 100th birthday next year.
Although Mr. Sauga identified the joint as 'St. Lawrence Pool Hall' (I gave him credit for a correct answer), it is indeed the 'Montreal Pool Room' which hasn't had pool table in decades, but serves legendary steamed hot dogs.

Question 68
In addition to Chinatown and Little Italy, what is Montreal's third and newest ethnically named neighbourhood?
Yup. as correctly answered, it is 'La Petit Mahgreb,' located around Jean Talon and named for the Arab community from North Africa.

Question 77

From this old photograph, can you identify the street you are looking down?

Look close, you can identify the big SNOWDON theatre sign that still exists on Decarie Blvd.

Question 83
What is Montreal's most famous strip bar?

While I accept SUPER SEXE as a correct answer, I always thought CHEZ PAREE was Montreal's most famous strip bar.

Question 96
What are Montreal's two most-preferred public suicide sites?

Before the Jacques Cartier Bridge erected anti-suicide barriers, it was in the world's TOP TEN most popular suicide sites. The other popular suicide site is the Montreal Metro, where about 25 people throw themselves in front of oncoming trains each year.

By the way, the Montreal press does not report suicides or attempts for obvious reasons.

Tomorrow:
Blame Canadiens Language Fiasco on Geoff Molson

Quebec's Extraodinary Public Servants

2011-12-23T00:00:00.000-05:00

As a foodie, I do have a weakness for cooking shows, especially those that are realistic and provide useful information to part-time hobby cooks like myself.

The only French language show in the food genre that I watch regularly is Radio Canada's l'Epicerie, which is a show about food, rather than cooking and includes background on how and where our food is produced with an accent on Quebec and Canadian products.

A couple of weeks ago I was lounging on the couch and decided to run an episode which I had recorded earlier, certainly not looking for content for this blog!
The first story was about meal preparation at some of Quebec's public senior citizens homes, which I have to admit, I didn't have much interest in watching.

When I think of these institutions, visions of dreary and grim establishments manifest in my mind. Prison-like institutions built for seniors who cannot afford private placement and where warehousing these seniors is done as cheaply as possible. Places where elder abuse would not be surprising and where 'inmates' would be fed a cheap diet of Kraft Dinner, Jello and processed cheese sandwiches, then and trundled off to their unkempt rooms as early as possible.

Why did these visions run through my head?
Dunno, but we see so many grim stories of elder abuse at senior homes that I'd assume that if it were to take place, a public institution with uncaring and bored state employees would be the first place where it would happen.

My hopes weren't lifted when the hosts told viewers that the daily budget for food, three meals and two snacks was a paltry $6.00 per resident.
Six bucks! Considering that a large coffee at Starbucks goes for around four bucks, I could only imagine the crap residents were fed.

That gentle reader is when my eyes were opened, to a world I never imagined existed!

A world where industrious government employees work hard and efficiently.
A world where innovative government employees work smartly!
A world where caring government employees consult and listen to those they serve!
A world where dedicated government employees take pride in their work!

Yes readers, this world does exist!
In Quebec you might ask?..........Yes.

The television story went on to chronicle the inner workings of the meal delivery system in several senior citizen homes in Quebec and viewing the story of these dedicated public employees doing a superb job brought tears to my eyes.

First correction.
The institutions aren't dreary, neglected or unsanitary. Not by a long shot.
Residents seem to be happy and living fulfilled and interesting lives. The caring staff are attentive and hard at work placing the welfare of residents first.

As the story rolled on, I felt a little embarrassed for making so many wrong-headed assumptions.

The management of these public senior homes have bandied together to purchase food in bulk and save up to 60% from what we pay in the supermarket. The food budget is fixed, so they spend what they have and no more. The government isn't going to underwrite deficits, so close attention is paid to spend so much and no more. How refreshing!

Nutritionists prepare monthly menus in consequence to what can be bought, whether it be fresh vegetables when cheaply available in the summer or frozen during the expensive winter months. Stretching a budget is raised to an art form, something generally unheard of in government.

The menus provided are outstanding and positively impressive. Nutritious and healthy, they include meat, fowl, and fish and are tailored to the preferences of seniors, most of whom were born in the thirties.

Dedicated chefs prepare meals for hundreds of residents as if it was for their own family. Special attention by administrators is made to listen to residents through regularly scheduled meetings that discuss preferences.
More tomato soup. "Yes we can do it!"

I don't want to go overboard, but I was duly impressed by the evident pride shown by all of those interviewed for the story interviewed.
I don't think administrators of these homes provided a budget for yoga or hotel stays for their employees, nor do I think there's money available to send a team to the Bahamas or Hawaii to study how things are done there.
When I think back to the English Montreal School Board defending expensive trips abroad, I shudder.

Things can get better. I don't know what type of leadership exists in these institutions but it should be bottled and sent around to every government department.
I'm sure things aren't perfect, but what goes on here is so much higher above the bar of your average government department, that if replicated, it would likely save taxpayers billions of dollars.

Alas to dream.....

And so readers, while I promised to remain positive until the New Year, alas, I have to tell you another story at the other end of the kindness spectrum.

Each year local newspapers bring us a bunch of hard luck stories in an effort to drive donations to local ~~Christmas~~ holiday charities, be it the Salvation Army or what not.
I'm usually immune to these tales of woe, which I find overly exploitive, but it does not stop me from donating anyway.

Here is perhaps the nastiest and cruelest story that I've read all year. If you don't want to feel sad, skip past it.

Marisol Turcious is a 39 year old mother who is dying of cancer. Thirty-nine years old!
She is already in the latter stages of the disease and in palliative care, she doesn't have long to live.
Friends and family have contributed around six or seven thousand dollars for funeral expenses and a lap top computer that she uses to record messages for her four children, aged three to eighteen.

Marisol records these messages during periods of lucidity, the strong painkillers affecting her mental abilities, most of the time.
Two weeks ago her children were given permission to spend the night with her in the hospital.
That night someone broke into the modest apartment and robbed it of everything, the laptop, the money and anything else of value.
Marisol is devastated!

As I read the story, an unbelievable rage built within me. Really, WTF!

Readers, I don't know what to say...I think you'll agree that this is one ~~SAD~~ SICK story...

The crime remains unsolved, what else is new?
Our police are too busy giving out tickets to be concerned.

Read the story in English. Read the story in French

Here is a picture I clipped sometime this year. It says alot.

Translation- THIEF- We're immigrants, We don't have riches

Kinda makes the hulabaloo over Randy Cunneyworth's lack of French a case much ado about nothing.

Let's think about that as Christmas approaches.

******************************

Before I go for the year, let me remind you of a typically Quebec news story. One that will provide a smile and a grimace.

A Châteauguay couple, whose home was burgled found their camera, part of the stolen loot, in a local pawn shop.
After calling the police, they were informed that it would be quite an ordeal to prove ownership and as such the police wouldn't bother seizing the property.

So what did the police advise them to do instead?
Buy back the camera, cops told them, after all, the pawn shop was only asking 50 bucks! Link{fr}
Arghhh.....

******************************

Loyal readers, I'll be off for a while, but I've prepared a very interesting post for New Year's Day.

It's an offbeat quiz geared towards Anglo Quebecker or expats and as you nurse your hangover, you might find it a spot of fun.

By the way, a special thanks to all those who make this blog interesting by participating in the comments section.
I've been told by friends, it is the most interesting part of the blog and I heartily agree.
Whether you support my position or are a strident opponent, conversation, arguments and vehement online disagrements are always better than violence.

People continue to ask me to censor insulting posts, but as a libertarian, it's not something I'm keen to undertake.
For or against.... speaking out is a democratic imperative and yes, insults do serve their purpose and contribute to an understanding of what people are actually thinking and feeling.
To me, the important thing is to provide a different type, a forum for all.

Sometimes it's hard for anglos to tolerate those harsh sentiments offered by French language militants who post here, but more often than not, it's the other way around.

Thanks to all who participate in the comments sections, it is you all who make for an interesting read.

Merry Christmas! Joyeux Noël!

Happy New Year! Bonne Année!

Dangerous Language Rhetoric Fails to Convince

2011-12-21T00:00:00.000-05:00

Chateau Marois

In order for a language or culture to be threatened, it obviously takes another language or culture to threaten. Whether true or not, French language militants have been shouting loud and long that it is the English language and culture that is menacing the survival of French in Quebec.

The unfortunate extension of this argument is that, if English culture is threatening, it's Quebec's English citizens, who are to blame, in some major or minor way.

So inured are Quebecers to anti-English rhetoric from radicals that they no longer recognize attacks on English citizens as good old fashioned racism, which it is.
If one were to point this out, as I am doing now, shock would likely be the reaction by the francophone majority.
Quebecers as Racists?.....Never!

A couple of days ago, Pauline Marois' aide told reporters that she was about to close a sale on her famous mansion on Ile Bizard;

"The sale of the property was not conditional on the buyer being a fluent French speaker, Marie Barrette, Marois's press attaché told the Journal de Québec.
"There were no sale conditions related to the origins of the person, but even better if it is a francophone. It's nice. That makes one more in Quebec," Barrette told the paper." Montreal Gazette Alternate Link

I almost fell over reading the statement and was inclined to paraphrase the Bible, 'Forgive them Lord, for they know not what they say!'
The spokesperson actually made it a point to tell reporters that Madame Marois did not include a clause excluding potential purchasers based on their origins which, as any high school student could tell you is not only racist but quite illegal!
So congratulations to Madame Marois for her courage in not excluding any potential buyer, based on race, creed or colour!

Imagine dear reader if you met with your local Century 21 agent, say in Montreal West, and made it a point to tell her that you wouldn't insist on a clause barring French Canadians from buying your house.
She'd probably think you a nutbar and racist extraordinaire. She'd be right.

But these type of racist public statements go unchallenged in Quebec every day.

And so it has unfortunately become commonplace in the media and among separatist politicians to disparage Anglos and allophones as less than desirable, a negative disturbance in the force, citizens to be tolerated, but never accepted as equals.

"We must work to develop policies to keep Montreal francophones from leaving the island and create conditions for more francophones to return." Pierre Curzi - PQ

What does this statement say about how Anglophones and Allophones are perceived by separatist politicians?

I daresay that if one were to ask Mr. Curzi if he viewed Anglophones and Allophones as less worthy or desirable citizens than francophones, he would bristle with indignation.

But Mr. Curzi's view that there are too few francophones on the island of Montreal is just a polite way of saying that there are too many Anglophones and Ethnics.
If one were to point out that calling on francophones to settle in Montreal as a patriotic duty is nothing but naked ethnocentrism and racism, he would reject the notion because, as he would tell us, French is the 'natural state' of Quebec that must be preserved.

So I wonder how Mr. Curzi would view a City of Ottawa politician calling on Anglophones to reoccupy Vanier, a district that has developed a large francophone population. What if that politician complained that anglophones were losing their historic hold on the city?
Or how about an Israeli politician asking Israeli Jews to move to Jerusalem to alter the balance with Muslims?
Burlesque comparisons?.....readers will judge.

In Laval, alarms have been sounded that too many anglos (especially Greeks) are invading the landscape. Militant French language groups have demanded that countervailing measures be taken to re-establish the primacy of French, but nothing concrete is proposed. Link{Fr}
So what exactly do they propose to reverse the undesirable Anglo/Greek invasion?

I've written about the problem of those militants wishing to protect the French language crossing over the line into ethnocentric territory before.
$2,000 Fine for Speaking English
Revisiting Hérouxville

Latent Racism in Quebec a Sad Reality

Everyday the likes of Gilles Proulx, Mario Beaulieu and Pauline Marois bombard the media with messages of hate and disrespect towards Quebec's minorities, warning francophones of the dire and diabolical threat that we represent towards the preservation of the Francophone culture in Quebec.
They speak openly about English as inherently evil and dangerous and somehow fail to understand that they are talking about fellow citizens!
It's dangerous and evil talk, meant to drive Quebecers towards hate and animosity, a wedge meant to tilt enough towards the promised land of sovereignty, through fear and hate.

But while some people bite, the thirty year campaign of vilification has largely failed.

Incredibly, most francophones ignore the hyperbolic forecasts of gloom and doom and the nasty representations of Anglos and Ethnics, this to the utter consternation of the radical mouthpieces, who keep on yelling FIRE!, without much response or panic from the public.

Thankfully, Quebec francophones are imbued with a healthy disrespect for authority and don't particularly enjoy being manipulated or told what to think or do.
Perhaps it is in response to centuries of domination by the Church where an entire province was instructed how to conduct their personal lives, even how many children to have.

For Quebecers who live in these dangerously 'at risk' communities, anglos and ethnics don't seem to be the problem that the language supremacists insist that we are.
The campaign to trigger troublesome language confrontations remains unsupported by the overwhelming majority of those francophones who reside or work directly on the linguistic firing line.

Despite decades of harping on the English and ethnics, it seems that the only place where the campaign has any traction at all, is in the hinterland, where there are hardly any anglos or ethnics at all!
Call it 'fear of the unknown'

Again, much to the consternation of radicals, Anglos, Allos and Francophones get along rather nicely where they actually co-exist and in fact almost one third of anglos choose a Francophone life partner and over two thirds of them end up sending their offspring to French schools.
The intermarriage rate between francophones and allophones is equally impressive.

Given the level of disrespect and hate spewed by French language supremacists, it's a wonder that the atmosphere between francophones and anglophones remains so positive.

Readers, I travelled this province from one end to another professionally for over thirty years, during which time, I have never been disrespected for being an Anglophone and that hasn't changed a whit over the years.
People recognize my very strong French as sometimes imperfect, but it hasn't mattered at all, my effort to conduct business in French appreciated.
Back in 1995, during the referendum campaign, a business trip took me up through Saguenay-Lac St-Jean region and just to see what kind of reaction I'd get, I wore a big NON button.
I thought I'd be accosted or at the least given a tongue lashing by one or the other, but it never happened.
Some people asked if I was an organizer and a few people came up to me to tell me in whispers that they'd be voting No.

Despite all the harsh rhetoric by radicals, Quebecers remain a kind and gentle people, of that I'm convinced and I remain happy to live in the most exciting and stimulating city in Canada.

Of course I bitch and moan the whole year long, largely because I'd like this province to be better, but like most Anglophones who live here, Quebec remains MY home and native land.

You may agree or not agree, but on this point my opinion cannot be swayed...

.....And so readers, positive is where I'd like to finish up the year.

As Christmas approaches, the majority of Canadians are feeling good about themselves, their family and the society they live in and this happy atmosphere is contagious, as most non-Christians will readily admit.

In this spirit, I'm going to do no bashing, complaining or harping until the New Year, at least.

On Friday, I'll tell you a marvellous story of Quebec public workers doing their job superbly....I'm not kidding.

Habs Hit Panic Button

2011-12-19T00:00:00.000-05:00

Randy Cunneyworth - Sacrifical lamb?

You probably have to live in hockey mad Quebec to understand the enormity of something so mundane as the firing of a coach of a local sports team.
The newspapers, radio and television are talking of nothing else and for once, reflect accurately what Quebecers want to talk about.

As is always the case, language rules and the first topic of discussion is new coach Randy Cunneyworth's lack of French.
Lost in the discussion is the fact that he wasn't given a real mandate, just the opportunity to finish out the year with the elusive promise of 'we'll see what happens.'

The decision to replace Jacques Martin was perhaps no surprise, but the promotion of Cunneyworth was. It signals a certain level of panic by general manager Pierre Gauthier who now appears to be working to save his own job.

Gauthier admitted that he's been mulling over the change for a couple of weeks, so he had plenty of time to look around for a French-speaking coach, something even he, in the Ivory Tower of the executive offices of the Bell Centre understands is necessary.

But as I mentioned in a post last week, when it comes to francophone coaches, at the moment, the pickings are slim, the most talented already having been used up and spewed out by the impatient Habs or otherwise gainfully employed and under contract by other teams.

A bunch of former francophone coaches are working for the RDS network (the French version of TSN) and on a post-game show on Saturday night, recounted the circumstances of their firings and the residual bitterness that they still harbour.

Since 1985 the Habs have had twelve coaches averaging just two years, a shameful display of panic and immaturity that reflects not on the coaches, but management. The average amount of games coached by these gentlemen is less than 200 each.

Having grown up watching the legendary Toe Blake and Scotty Bowman coach for a combined 23 years behind the bench, it's a bit depressing to watch the panic and fear that rules upper management's decisions vis-a-vis coaches this last quarter century.

In the 39 years between 1940 to 1979, the Canadiens had but four coaches and won sixteen Stanley Cups and by the way, of the 23 Stanley Cups won by the Canadiens, 19 were teams led by Anglophone coaches.

And so it seems that the Canadiens have given up on the year, a shame because the fans haven't quite been ready to throw in the towel just yet.
No doubt Cunneyworth understands his position as caretaker, holding the fort until a francophone can be found.

It appears that last year's wonder boy, Tampa Bay Lightening coach Guy Boucher has gone from hero to zero with the team wallowing in last place and might be available sooner than later.
The same goes for Bob Hartley who is having a dreadful time over in Switzerland and is likely to be canned soon.

These two, in my mind, are the most likely candidates to take over in the off season.

By the way, the Canadiens never considered Patrick Roy, who admitted that his phone hasn't rung.

As for Cunneyworth's lack of French, the reaction was mostly subdued with most commentators warning that if he turns around the team, he might be tolerated, but if things remain the same or deteriorate, he will be mercilessly hounded out of the job.

Perhaps he can turn the season around, the 2011 version of the Canadiens have been hopeless under-performers, with player after player turning in sub-par performances, so far.

Was that Martin's fault?.... It remains to be seen.

Of course injuries haven't helped, but blaming the Markov fiasco, wherein the 5 million dollar plus man hasn't played a single game this year, is no excuse. Other teams such as Pittsburgh and Philadelphia have shown how good they can be despite injuries that make the Canadiens look healthy.

But the long term looks grim for the team, francophone or anglophone coach aside. The team has tied up millions of dollars on long-term contracts for players who are notorious for their lack of production or absence through injury.

Perhaps the saddest of all player moves was the acquisition of ex-Maple Leaf castoff, the overpaid Thomas Kaberle.
There was a time that the Leafs were manned by Montreal Canadiens rejects and sadly, that seems to have reversed.

As for language, get ready for some interesting times as the Press spoils to crucify the Habs new Anglophone coach.
After the 5-3 loss to the Devils in Cunnyworth's first game, he was already criticized for running the same old game plan as Martin.
After one game!

For that matter, there will be no honeymoon with the fans either. In the third period with the hometown Habs trailing the Devils, the new coach was serenaded by the boo-birds, something not heard in the Bell Centre for quite a while.

As the Habs melt down, one of the last vestiges of Quebec pride is fading to black.
At least the fans and the Press can content themselves with blaming the fiasco on an Anglo coach.